talented amateurs
by PreludeInZ
Summary: Penelope, Gordon and the aftermath of an afterparty.
1. champagne and bordeaux

There's always an aftermath to the afterparty, even if the the afterparty is only ever attended by her most intimate inner circle. In this case the occasion was a birthday party, and an _eightieth_ birthday party at that, and Penelope had been honored beyond measure when Scott had asked if she would be willing to provide a venue. Of course the answer could only have been yes, only she'd gone quite a bit further than might have been expected and provided the entire party. It's been a grand, beautiful, glorious day, a fitting tribute to the extraordinary matriarch of an extraordinary family.

But it's over now. The guests have all been shuttled home, and the aforementioned afterparty has wound down. The guest of honor retired at a respectable eleven-thirty in the evening, leaving her grandsons to unwind, to relax and enjoy one of the only nights of the year during which their services cannot possibly be called upon. The Tracys are her houseguests, and will be staying the night, and the morning thereafter will stay for breakfast, and then they'll more than likely be scattered back to all corners of the world, back at the beck and call of global catastrophe _in potentia_.

For Penelope's part, she's been happy to watch the boys spend their downtime and to personally ensure that nothing intrudes upon it, especially now that night's fallen, and the world outside the manor has grown dark and quiet. She'd left Scott and John at a corner of the bar, undone jackets and discarded cufflinks, with a generously gifted bottle of her father's brandy between them. Kayo and Virgil had found their way into Parker's company, and a deck of cards had found its way to the top of a table, and if gambling is considered poor form in polite company, well, the caliber of jokes being told around said table already preclude the politesse of the assembled company. Alan, she'd last seen in Sherbet's custody, Sherbet being the sort of creature with an acutely tuned ability to insinuate himself into the company of whoever is most liable to slip him snacks from the buffet table.

And Gordon—

Gordon comes and finds her, and that's impressive, because Penelope takes a considerable amount of finding, especially considering the way she's tucked herself away in an alcove beneath one of the manor's myriad staircases, and left the evening to dwindle down without her. It's not that she's avoiding the boys or that she's uninterested in their company, it's just that an eightieth birthday party takes a great deal of planning, and she feels she deserves a few private moments to bask unabashedly in the success of it all.

She's slipped out of her shoes, a beastly pair of Louboutins, and her stockings have garnered a run or two, not that it matters beneath the long skirt of her gown. Out of habit she hides these demurely, crosses her legs at the knee and presses her calves together, as though runs in her stockings are a shameful secret. It's the part of the evening where she rather likes to have some secrets, anyway. She feels rather like a secret herself, all hidden away and triumphant as she is.

But Gordon finds her anyway, reclining on a divan tucked beneath a curving oaken staircase, with half a bottle of champagne on the floor beside her, and a glass half-emptied in her hand. He wanders into the back hallway that leads into the manor's east wing from the ballroom, with a glass of his own in hand, though his is empty. She wonders how long he's been carrying it around, why he doesn't just set it down someplace. It doesn't really matter. He smiles when he notices her and she gives a little wave in response, but he doesn't say anything at first. Instead he paces a slow lap of the room, a small, transitional hall that mainly exists to connect one half of the house to the other, to give anyone who's found their way upstairs somewhere to find their way back downstairs again . The walls are wood paneled and there's unironically a suit of armor in the corner, and this gets a curious examination from a pair of bright, bright brown eyes, before Penelope clears her throat to get Gordon's attention.

"Are you lost?" she asks, lightly teasing. "I do hope you aren't lost, Gordon. It would be so terribly embarrassing for a member of your profession."

"No," Gordon answers, and his voice matches the lightness of hers, as he wanders over to the divan she's taken possession of and hangs idly nearby, still with his wineglass in hand. He's lost his shoes at some point in the course of the evening too, and wears brightly patterned socks beneath a pair of dark blue slacks and a dark shirt. This is lined at the cuffs and collar with a subtle floral pattern that manages to remain on the right side of tasteful, with its sleeves rolled up past his the elbows. He's retained possession of a black silk tie, but this is undone, loose around his open collar. "Oh, no, nah. It's not _that_ big a house, Penelope. C'mon. Give a guy a little credit."

Penelope just smiles and draws her knees up, sits up a little straighter to clear the space at the end of the divan, every inch the good hostess. "You've the wrong sort of glass for champagne," she points out, but reaches for the bottle anyway. She gestures at the wine glass in his hand and he holds it out obligingly. "Was that the Bordeaux? It was a rather good year, if memory serves."

"It sure was a glass of wine," Gordon agrees, sitting down and affecting a parody of seriousness as he comments, "It was okay. Uh, I mean, oaky. Izzat a word? Probably. Nice finish. Hints of, uh, cherry koolaid. Lighter fluid. Nutmeg on the back end. Possibly a little bit wasted on me, but then, possibly _I'm_ a little bit wasted, so I guess possibly not?" He shakes his head a little, and seems sheepish as he shrugs, "Dunno. I'm not, um, not really a wine person."

Penelope pauses with the champagne bottle halfway tilted towards his glass, "Is that a no?" she inquires, as a good hostess should, but also proceeds to inform him, "Champagne doesn't count, you know. It's mostly bubbles. It's barely wine, _really_. It's just grape juice that got excited. And I can't finish this by myself."

He holds his glass out to meet her halfway and grins a bright-eyed grin, with a shake of his head. "I'm never gonna say no to you pouring me a drink, Penny. Penelope. Thanks."

"You're very welcome, darling," she answers blithely, as pale gold bubbles and froths into entirely the wrong sort of glass, not that it especially matters, for someone who picks up notes of cherry koolaid in a '45 Bordeaux. Her wrist twists reflexively as she finishes pouring, a trick that catches the drops at the lip of the bottle, so none of it can fall to the floor. Primly, with the exaggerated care of someone who is perhaps also more than just a little tipsy, Penelope adjusts the skirt of her evening gown to sit a little more evenly across her knees. Her dress is an airy mauve confection of lace and tulle, and her crossed ankles peek out from beneath the hem as she draws up her knees to sit comfortably. With her other hand, she lifts her half-full glass and offers a toast, "To your grandmother."

Gordon laughs softly at that, but matches her gesture and drinks when she does, a long swallow that drains the glass. "Cheers. But I wouldn't even be, like, _half_ as drunk as I am right now if people would've just quit _toasting_ the woman. Happy birthday, Grandma! Here's a _massive hangover_."

"She'd switched to sparkling water about halfway through the evening, if I recall."

"Yeah, well, she's a smart lady."

" _Mm_." Penelope lowers her voice, almost conspiratorially, as she confesses, "I haven't been a terribly smart lady, myself."

"No?"

"No." Penelope giggles, which is as sure an indication as any that she's in a similar state, but relaxed and happy about the fact, unconcerned with whatever the next morning's consequences will be. She swallows the last of the light from the bottom of her glass and sets it aside. She congratulates herself rather shamelessly as she says, "It _was_ quite a good party though, I think. I do hope she enjoyed herself. I hope all of you did."

"Well." Gordon finds somewhere to deposit his own glass, and holds up a hand to count off an itemized list, finger by finger. "Lessee. She threw back a double Scotch with Scooter in honour of the occasion. Managed to get Johnny on the dance floor, which only happens about once every eighty years, so props to her there, too. Her cake probably weighed more than _Virgil_ does, and I think she and Alan probably ate a whole tier of it. And she got to bed before midnight, which is really the only thing she ever gives us hell about anymore anyway—if we keep her up too late past her bedtime. Yeah, Penelope, I'd say you did good."

She'd become abnormally preoccupied with his hands as he'd gone through the countdown, and so she notices that he's come up short by one finger out of five. She frowns at this and pushes herself up to kneel on the divan, facing him and peering at his hands as she leans over. She does some quick arithmetic as she backtracks through the roster. "But _you_ , though? You didn't say, about you. Did _you_ have a nice time?"

Closer to him now, she can properly appreciate just how quickly his smile flashes up, how genuine it is. "Oh, sure. Yeah, 'course. Of course I did. I always have a nice time when you're around."

It might be the quality of the evening or the quality of the company, but Penelope already has a glow of pride about her, and she's in the mood to luxuriate in other people's high esteem. Gordon, conveniently, probably holds her in higher esteem than most anyone else present tonight, and almost always meets her demands as far as sheer earnest flattery is considered. All it takes is the slightest encouragement. "You're really far too kind to me, Gordon," she demurs, lowering her eyes in a demonstration of utterly false modesty.

He shrugs, and his smile softens slightly. "It's a hobby."

"Of course, tonight seems like one of those very rare nights when you can say something like that and I can actually _believe_ you."

"Hmm?"

Penelope shrugs in turn, her bare shoulders shifting beneath a wrap of shimmering soft lace, in a way she doesn't even realize might be diverting. "Well, really, the sort of scenarios which put you in my company rarely ever seem the type to qualify as a 'nice time', Gordon."

"Oh." But he doesn't seem discouraged, just thoughtful. He rests his hands against the back edge of the divan, leans back slightly, considering this. "Mm. Well, but I still always have a nice time anyhow."

He's so matter-of-fact about it, so entirely sincere—Penelope can't help her laughter, and the warm glow in her chest feels as much like affection as it does like amusement. "My parties are nicer than my ill-advised escapades through the depths of South American murder tombs. Falling space hotels."

"Drowned cities," he volunteers.

"Drowned _kingdoms_ ," she counters. "And we were _both_ nearly drowned on both occasions. Really, Gordon, I can't in good conscience allow you to classify these sorts of encounters as 'nice times'. It makes me shudder to think what standard you're comparing them to. My parties are much nicer. Come to more of my parties."

"Your parties are pretty nice," he concedes, and then pauses for a moment, grows contemplative before he says, "Thank you, though. Really. For this—for all of it. For her. Grandma. We always want—god, I mean—every single one of us would pull the sky down, if she asked, if it'd make her happy, but it's just—pulling together a night like this? A night like she _deserves_? The five of us couldn't have managed something like this. I've seen Scotty decide that the quickest way between A and B is to jetpack his ass right up the side of a burning high-rise—but if you ask him to try and pick out canapes, suddenly the whole world hangs on whether we have shrimp toast or beluga caviar. And John's _worse_ , if you can believe it, but in a whole other way. I swear, there's not a sentimental bone in his goddamn body. He's been _banned_ from planning birthday parties, after the year Kayo's cake just said 'CAKE' on top. So it's just—I mean, we _mean_ well, but…" He shrugs and sighs, "Can't save the day every time, I guess."

It's remarkably endearing, all that sincerity bubbling up and bubbling over, his voice running away from him as he rambles. He's got her trying to remember just when, and _if_ she's ever actually seen him drunk before. Bordeaux and whatever else chased by champagne and it becomes apparent that he's chattery, earnest and wholehearted when he drinks, though she doesn't imagine he's really _properly_ drunk, just yet. An impish impulse has her considering the glass or so of champagne still lingering in the bottom of the bottle, but she leaves it alone for the moment.

Instead Penelope sits up and puts a hand on his arm to reassure him, pats his wrist gently as she says, "I think you've all got ample license to defer the duty of party planning to a professional."

Gordon grins at her again. "Or a talented amateur, at least."

"A _professional_ ," she corrects firmly, with a toss of her hair over her shoulder. Time and warmth have softened her carefully curled and coiffed hair into a tumble of champagne blonde curls, and she absently pulls a loose lock of hair back from where it falls across her throat. "Don't insult me, darling."

"A professional, then" he agrees solemnly, but then doubles back, shaking his head. "Only no, though, 'cuz we _could've_ got a professional. We could've got someone who would've done it for money and not—not just because of why you did it. Because _you_ know about us and you know about _her_ and you know how much she matters—how important it was, that tonight was…was nice. More than nice. You know." Her hand hasn't left his wrist, and now the his other hand closes over hers, squeezes gently. "Just—thank you, Penelope. Really. It was a beautiful night."

This is the sort of sincerity that makes her attempt at fishing for compliments seem shallow and rather vain, facing up against such honesty from someone who keeps his heart pinned so handily upon his sleeve. "You're very welcome," she says, and means it. "I was happy to do it, and I'll happily do it again."

"Yeah?" There's the faintest hint of challenge in his tone and he gives her a speculative look as he shifts on the divan, turns towards her. The warmth of his hand leaves hers, and a part of her notices. "Do me next?"

Penelope arches an eyebrow and asks, " _Are_ you next?"

He nods. "February. Allie's not 'til March."

Mentally she's already attempting to discern just what exactly her calendar holds in February, going through the roster of galas and charity events and dinners and whatever else crops up in the in-between, and she queries, "February—?"

"Fourteenth."

And isn't _that_ just entirely typical. She must have known that already, for how easily _that_ particular fact clicks into place. "Oh well, _naturally_. I did know that about you, I'm sure. Your birthday. Valentine's day." Penelope smiles and doesn't know quite why it's true, but says it anyway, "It suits you."

He chuckles and shakes his head. "Everybody says that."

"Do they?"

"Yeah. Except…funny thing; no one ever says why."

Now that he's asking, tacitly, Penelope frowns to herself, wondering why exactly it _is_ so particularly apt. To give herself a few moments to think, she reaches down for the champagne bottle, still sitting innocuously on the hardwood floor, and picks it up. She forgets herself and takes a sip straight from the bottle before she remembers her manners and offers it to her guest.

This makes him laugh, but then, it's not as though that's difficult to do. "Oh _man_ , just when I thought this party couldn't get any better. Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward chugs six hundred dollar champagne, straight from the bottle." His hands come up again, forefingers and thumbs flicking nimbly into a rectangle, framing her face like a camera lens. "What _would_ the tabloids say?"

"Probably just exactly that." Penelope knocks the bottle against his knuckles. He takes it, and then takes a long drink, especially for someone who claims not to care for wine. He hands it back to her nearly empty. "There's a reason it's a _private_ party, darling."

Again with that sunshiney smile. "Aww, see! You're a smart lady after all. Figure out what the deal is with me and Valentine's Day, smart lady?"

Penelope hasn't, and she shrugs, takes a delicate sip of her wine, though he's polished off nearly all of it. "It's an enduring mystery," she defers, but pats his hand consolingly, as she says again, "It just suits you. It makes a great deal of sense. But yes, your _birthday_. Well, if you're asking me, of course, I'd be delighted to plan something." She pauses and needs to think for a moment, because a question she _should_ know the answer to seems to be coming up against a blind spot in her memory. She at least has the excuse of champagne and a long day behind her, though she still feels slightly embarrassed to need to ask, "How old are you now?"

"Twenty-four."

The little gasp that escapes her is one of genuine surprise, though it might have been slightly more affected than genuine, if there hadn't been _quite_ so much champagne. "You're _not_ twenty-four!"

It must sound like such a scandalous accusation, because Gordon starts a little where he sits beside her, taken slightly aback. "Twenty-five, in less than a month," he corrects, as though he's still at the age where the technicality is important. "Is, um…is that gonna be a problem?"

The embarrassment is beginning to be indistinguishable for the warmth already colouring her cheeks, and she shrugs her shoulders again, still blissfully unaware of what this particular motion does to her companion. "No, don't be silly. It's only that I can't ever seem to imagine you as any older than twenty. Twenty-one, perhaps. However old you were when we met, however long ago that was."

This doesn't make him laugh, and instead there's a sort of wry twist of his expression, and a sardonic, "Oh, _thanks_."

"Oh, don't," she chides, and presses her elbow lightly into his ribs. At some point, without realizing she's done so, she's sat herself up and migrated to the edge of the divan beside him. "Twenty- _five_ though. I only mean that it's been such a long time."

"Yeah. Long time."

But even as he says it, something about his voice has changed, something that makes her take notice. Some of the laughter's gone out of it, some of the warmth has faded. He suddenly seems distant, almost melancholy, and Penelope finds herself given pause, watching him for a moment.

And abruptly it's strange that in her head he's still newly twenty-one, the second youngest sibling of five, all loud and brash and with the raw edges of his adolescence not yet rubbed off of him, perpetually smirking and without the first idea of how to talk to a _Lady_. At twenty-three she'd been worldly, by comparison, with her years of finishing school and her Cambridge education and her ongoing training in the early echelons of spycraft. But she's twenty-seven now. And he'll be twenty-five in less than a month. And ny that metric, those two years between them seem to matter a great deal less than they had, then.

Because he's _settled_ , somehow, grown up and grown into himself, and she knows him now for one of the best people she'll ever meet, an extraordinary member of an extraordinary family, but still remarkable in his own right, on his own merits. In the passage of all those years she neglects to him credit for, he's become a pilot and an aquanaut, a paramedic and a first-responder; a foundational member of one of the most prestigious rescue agencies in the world, and a worthy fifth of the legacy to one of the world's greatest fortunes. And none of this takes into account his heart and his spirit and his sincerity, and who he is as a person, entirely separate from what he does for a living. Without meaning to, it's possible that she's given offense, by reducing Gordon to someone unchanged from who he was when she first knew him.

But before she can tactfully find a way to reformat the whole idea—before she can make some diplomatic remark about youthful energy or some other nonsense like that—Gordon clears his throat and changes the subject, veers sharply away from the topic at hand. "So," he says, bright and bluff and like he's twenty-one years old again. " _So_ , like—Thunderbirds, right?"

Penelope blinks at him, but manages to keep hold of the thread of the conversation, and rolls with it. "Oh, yes, I'm passing familiar. Wonderfully clever machines. Very deft pilots."

He grins again, and that air of melancholy seems to pass like a cloud. "Best in the world. D'you mind if I talk about Thunderbirds for a minute? I'm trying to get down to an idea, here, and there's just—well, lemme see if I can explain it." He pauses, shifts on the divan to sit with his body turned towards her, in response "Bear, um, bear with me for a minute, I gotta get…kinda technical, I guess. About this whole idea."

"Oh, please do," Penelope purrs, continuing to keep the secret of just how much she enjoys hearing technically minded people talk about technical things. She rearranges herself to recline against the back of the chaise again, her legs still drawn up beneath her long skirt. She clasps her hands around her knees, attentive.

Gordon grows more animated with her agreement, starting to talk with his hands as he comes to grips with his chosen topic. "Right. Right, 'cuz uh—so, okay. Thunderbirds. So, we do—like, we do post-flights? Y'know? Post-dives, I guess, for me. Although one time we dropped '4 in a super-collider and I think _technically_ that qualified as requiring a post-flight. Post-checks. Anyway. After every landing back at base, whether we flew five hours or five minutes, we do the same checklist, because that's just—you just _do_ that. You check through that same list of things every time, because they're the things that might've been affected one way or the other, by your standard launch and your average flight. Right? Uh, you with me so far?"

Penelope's answering nod is blandly tolerant. "Yes, I follow."

He's instantly embarrassed, and rubs at the back of his neck as he nods. "Right. 'course you do. It's not actually that complicated. So, uh, anyway. Those are like, just everyday things. They're basically the same every time, nothing's usually ever really _wrong_ , it's just the sorta stuff that you wanna be aware of, and to catch early, just in case anything needs attention. But there's not usually much that's surprising about a post-flight check. We do them a lot. Usually nothing's changed in a major way, mostly everything stays within acceptable tolerances."

"Well, I should hope so," Penelope murmurs, arch and subtle as she applies a deliberate double-meaning. "It's really such an important quality, for a Thunderbird, to be dependable."

The way he looks at her, then, with just a little more sharpness than there might have been otherwise, behind his bright eyed gaze—perhaps she wasn't quite as subtle as she'd thought. "Right," he says again, for the fifth time, not that he's counting, though she is, and it makes her smile. " _Right_. So, uh. But there's—we also do weekly, monthly, yearly type checks. And those, uh…are just…more, m-more thorough, I guess. Looking at the macro rather than the micro. Stress testing major systems and going way deeper into telemetry and just—looking for the big changes. The stuff you don't notice in the short term because it changed so slowly. Gradual wear and tear. Scott says it about 'One, sometimes, that her jets get some age on 'em—about a thousand flight hours—and it takes about that long before he can start to tell, 'cuz he can only _really_ feel the difference when he's got a fresh set. And I was just—I guess I was just thinking…"

It's unfortunate, about the technical aspect of technical talk, that it does seem to act in concert with the champagne and the lateness of the hour, and the softness of the light in this very cozy and quiet back hallway. The manor's grown so still since the end of the party, that it seems almost as though they might be the only two people still here. And Penelope doesn't mean to yawn, she really doesn't, because she's been enjoying the change of topic—but she yawns anyway. Not because she's bored, but because quite a lot of champagne has crept up rather suddenly, and it's been a very long day.

And Gordon just freezes, like she's caught him out in the act of something, that her perfectly innocent yawn is some sort of indictment. "Oh—shit, sorry," he says, hastily, before she can apologize in her own right—and then he's off again, speaking just a little bit too quickly again, embarrassed and making excuses for himself, "Sorry, Penelope. God, I've gotta sound like an absolute idiot. Post-flight checks. _Christ_ , what kinda moron—never mind. I just—no, just, never mind. Sorry. _Sorry_ , I should—I should get back…"

"No," she protests immediately, sitting up and reaching out to catch his wrist as he starts to stand, starts to look for an exit. He's blushing now, and for all that she's been reminded that he's nearly twenty-five years old, right now he reminds her very much of the nearly twenty-one year old he'd been when they'd met, such a long time ago. "No, I was listening. You seemed like you were coming up to the point, please, do excuse me for interrupting. It's just been such a long day and I've had rather a lot of wine. I didn't mean to be rude."

"You weren't. You're tired and I'm being an idiot, and—"

"Gordon," she interrupts firmly, and gives his wrist a sharp, imperious tug, indicating her insistence that he sit back down. "We were having a lovely chat. Please, none of this nonsense. Sit."

He sits, but he's rigid and tense as he does so, and he looks around a little helplessly for the emptied bottle of champagne, picks it up from where Penelope had left it on the floor when he finds it. He closes one eye and squints down the bottleneck into the empty vessel, then sighs and turns it over in his hands, reads the label and whistles softly to himself. "…well, that is just a _substantially_ higher ABV then I would've figured on. _Jeez_. I thought I was maybe going easy, seeing as how it's only champagne."

She chuckles. "Oh, darling, heavens no. That's a fairly dire misapprehension about champagne."

Gordon's thumbs rub lightly over the gold embossed text on the label as he continues to turn the bottle beneath his fingers, still staring at the label. "Ol' Dom Perignon must really know what he's doing."

"It's the bubbles," Penelope informs him sagely. "But, please. You were saying?"

"Was I saying?" He pauses, and then a little hesitantly, "… _what_ was I saying?"

And she has the opportunity now to demonstrate that she _was_ listening, that she'd been paying attention to the content of the conversation instead of the sound of his voice. He has quite a nice voice, actually, all light and warm and earnest. And she absolutely _had_ been listening, though it does take a moment of concentration to summon up the memory of what she'd heard him say. "About Thunderbirds. And keeping them in working order. Weeks and months and years. Micro and macro. Changes over time."

"Oh. Yeah."

"What about it? You did seem to be leading up to something."

"Yeah. I was."

But he doesn't continue.

Maybe it's down to the pleasantness of the conversation that she's gotten a little complacent, that she hasn't fully appreciated the shift in his tone, in his overall manner. Trepidation has crept over him and his sentences have gotten shorter, almost terse. And now he's grown still and reluctant beside her, and she feels him tense just slightly when she puts her hand on his arm. "Gordon? Are you okay?" she asks softly, trying not to sound as though he's starting to worry her, even if it's true.

It strikes her once again that she's never really seen him drunk, and maybe he hadn't wanted to be. Maybe he knows his limits and there'd been a tipping point he'd meant to avoid, a line between merriment and melancholy. Maybe she's made a mistake, been inconsiderate somehow, and missed the point of what he'd been trying to tell her, talking through his technicalities. Maybe that extended metaphor about the care and maintenance of Thunderbirds had been his way of trying to tell her that he's starting to suffer from some wear and tear of his own, starting to break down in the macro way, as opposed to the micro. As he continues not to say anything, she bites her lip and starts, "I didn't mean…"

"I'm not twenty-one anymore."

And Penelope's absolutely listening now, to what he says and the way he says it, because he's saying it in a voice she's never heard before, a voice that's interrupted her in more ways than one. His voice cuts through that warm, bubbly haze and gets every aspect of her attention.

Gordon's not looking at her as he continues, still staring at the label on the bottle in his hands, "And maybe it makes me a hypocrite to ask this, but I guess you've just got me wondering—is that really how you think of me? And is it always gonna be? Am I still twenty-one, and you get to be twenty-seven, and I just don't ever get the chance to catch up? What needs to change about how I am, to get me outta that box?"

There are a great many things to say about this line of thought, all _sorts_ of flaws of logic to point out. That anything about him needs to change, first and foremost. To say nothing of the entirely the false assumption that this actually _is_ still how she thinks of him, and not just something she's said carelessly. She'd only said it, halfway joking, as a means of diverting attention from the way she so easily sees that clear, perfect assocation between him and Valentine's day.

But instead of telling him any of these very important things, Penelope frowns, just a little, and asks, "Why would that make you a hypocrite?"

He still refuses to look at her, and continues to stare stubbornly at the empty bottle in his hands—but in the long moments that pass as he tries to formulate an answer, there's nothing stopping her from looking at _him_.

He's cleaned up for the evening, and he cleans up well; sitting beside her, he's handsome in profile. There's not a single member of his family who isn't, really, that five out of five brothers could've been blessed with equal chances at their father's rugged good looks or their mother's fine, delicate features. Gordon favours his father, with the squareness of his jaw and the shape of his cheekbones, but his eyes are emphatically his mother's, warm like honey and amber beneath a fringe of golden lashes.

But he's grown so serious, there's no hint of his usual smile. And seriousness on Gordon is so rare that it looks a lot like sadness, and something stirs dangerously in the depths of her heart, that she could hate it so much to see him look so sad. He certainly _sounds_ sad as he finally comes up with an answer.

"Because maybe—maybe I'm the one who was supposed to change the way I think about _you_. Maybe this was something I was supposed to grow out of, but I just didn't, because I didn't want to. Maybe you don't think I've changed, and maybe it's not fair that all _I_ can think is about how you've always stayed the same. But I think I've pretty much always felt this way about you, even if I can't tell how you feel about me."

There's a beat of silence, and her heart almost breaks at the sound of his voice when he says, "Even if maybe you were always gonna outgrow me."

If ever in future anyone were to ask Penelope about the moment she'd fallen in love with him, it wouldn't be this moment that she pointed to. Her answer will have the benefit of hindsight, and she'll point to an array of moments that could've fallen anywhere along the continuum of their long acquaintance. Moments when she'd fallen in love with the touch of his hands or the light in his eyes; the way he smiles and the way he makes a hobby of being kind to her. With each and every one of those hundreds of tiny changes; the work of moments that she's watched happen slowly, over the course of time. This isn't the moment she falls in love with him.

But this _is_ the moment when she realizes just how long he's been in love with her.

It's a strange thing to know, especially as wholly and completely as she suddenly seems to know it. Sitting beside him beneath a staircase, after a day like today, a day so different from the days they usually spend together—realizing that it's not the silly, childish crush she's always assumed it was. And it seems like such an enormous, obvious truth, yet it's hard to know how to react. Penelope doesn't feel frozen exactly, so much as she feels some essential part of her has stilled, and grown suddenly calm and tranquil, in the presence of something very important.

He'll remember what she does next for the rest of his life, and so it's very important that she does it slowly and carefully, with absolutely no ambiguity about her intent. Gordon's hands are still anxiously occupied by the champagne bottle he's been toying with, and Penelope reaches over to take it from him, sets it gently on the floor between their feet. One of her knees presses against his as she shifts to sit closer, takes his hand in hers, and threads her fingers between the spaces between his.

And, well. She's probably had _just_ enough champagne for this to be a viable course of action.

She finds she quite likes the way that, even sitting, she needs to turn her face upwards to press her lips against his jaw.

 _That_ gets Gordon's attention, finally gets him to turn towards her—and to find her _right_ there, ready and waiting and _certain_ , somehow, that this is the moment for it. Between honest questions and lowered inhibitions, and the warmth and the silence and the closeness between them, if it's going to happen, Penelope thinks it really ought to happen now.

And then it does.

Her initial gesture was just the offer of her permission, the promise of her curiosity. Granted both these things, Gordon turns towards her, and his free hand, the one she isn't holding, comes up to cradle her face. The side of his thumb ghosts gently across her cheekbone as he leans in to kiss her properly.

It would be dishonest to pretend that she hasn't at least _imagined_ it. At least in concept, if not necessarily in the specifics of execution. Just as a thought experiment. Just because he's always been so transparent about how much he likes her, if not necessarily that he might just be in _love_ with her. Just because she's actually well-aware that he's nearly twenty-five, and he's handsome and charming and funny and sweet, and always has been. Just because sometimes she thinks that she hasn't kissed nearly as many people as she might've liked to, in her life, and even most of these have been in the privacy of her imagination.

What she'd never imagined was how tender it would be, how gentle and perfect, just that one tentative, careful first kiss. Because he stops, with a catch of breath, and pulls back to look at her. And when he meets her eyes, Gordon seems surprised, almost astonished, to find that she's smiling at him, as though this wasn't ever the way _he_ had imagined this would go.

Penelope wonders if he can smell wine on her breath the same way she smells it on his, because his hand hasn't left her face, he hasn't let her get _that_ far. She pulls her fingers free from his and reaches up to grab a handful of his collar, a fistful of flowers in thrilling proximity to his throat. Her hand twists and her grip tightens, and she pulls him back to kiss him again; this time in the manner of a professional educating a talented amateur.

And his fingers twine gently into her hair at the nape of her neck and his other hand finds the small of her back—and _amateur_ is probably entirely the wrong word, actually. To call him an amateur is to give him entirely too little credit, in this particular arena, because within seconds he has her gasping, surprised and thrilled and more than a little impressed, if she's honest. He kisses her with the same wholehearted sincerity with which he does _everything_ , and it's all just a little bit _more_ than she'd imagined, in the best possible way. The hand that had drawn him in needs to push him back away, the ridge of his collarbone beneath the palm of her hand as she pulls back to get her breath. Penelope lets her fingers drift downward, and then presses her hand against the beat of his heart, as though it's the next thing she means to possess. She lifts her other hand to touch her fingertips lightly against his lips, and is immeasurably pleased that he has the good sense to kiss each one.

She's not sure if it's a mistake to break the silence that's fallen between them, full of soft breathing and the warm, inviting depth of his eyes, but Penelope's voice escapes her, hesitant and uncharacteristically shy, as she fashions a wish into a question, "…yes?"

Gordon smiles, just before he kisses her again, just once and just gently, and murmurs his answer, "Yeah. _God_ , yeah. Yes. Finally."

"Good," she breathes, and melts against him once more.

In some distant corner of the manor, audible by some trick of acoustics, a clock chimes the first hour after midnight. Neither of them pay it any particular attention.


	2. sheets and blankets

It's quarter to three in the morning, and there's someone else in his bed.

Although, from a technical standpoint, it's not _technically_ his bed, and probably (technically), it actually belongs to the someone else who's invaded it. Creighton-Ward Manor is her legacy, after all. Reasonably, at least from a legal standpoint, Penelope's probably entitled to be wherever the hell she wants.

Whether or not her rights as the heir apparent to the estate in question extend to _poking_ him— _insistently_ —in the ribs with the point of a manicured finger is not a question he knows the answer to.

But then, John's never been great when it comes to the whole concept of archaic feudal law and how much of it still applies to the modern English gentry.

He makes the mistake of opening one eye, and finds Penelope curled up on the other side of the bed, a bare handsbreadth from his face, her blue eyes big and bright and anxious in the moonlight through the bedroom window.

"John?" she whispers, urgent and then, unnecessarily, "Are you awake?"

" _No_ ," he grumbles, an immediately obvious lie, even as he groans and pulls the blankets over his head. "G'way."

She prods him in the ribs again and then draws a single shaky breath, to express several discrete concepts as a single word, " _John-I-got-drunk-at-a-party-and-I-made-out-with-your-brother-in-a-back-stairwell-and-now-I-can't-sleep._ "

The tail end of this is an anxious whimper, and that's enough to tweak at John's conscience, even as he starts to drop back off—easier to do than usual, after a long day of travel and merriment and liquor and gravity. He's had a bare and _grossly_ insufficient two hours of sleep, even if he'd managed to turn in a little earlier than the rest of his brothers. And now, for some reason, he's got a bed full of Penelope, whining—or whinging, seeing as it's England—at him. It's possible that the only way to solve this problem is to actually acknowledge her, and—even at half-past two in the morning, still a little fuzzy from all the merriment and the liquor and the gravity—John can still think his way through to the quickest path from problem to resolution. He's a little sullen as he pulls the blankets back down, but nevertheless he rubs at his eyes, and wearily asks, "Which one?"

Penelope sighs in a dramatic and tremulous fashion. "The corridor leading into the east wing off the back of the ballroom."

The silence that follows is painfully unironic.

And so John's not particularly apologetic as he reaches out to pat the top of Penelope's head and then informs her, "I'm going back to sleep."

This is received with a dismayed cry of protest and she seizes hold of his wrist plaintively. "John, _please_!"

"Okay, _okay_." It's playing absolute hell with hardwired instincts, the notes of genuine helplessness and distress in her tone, and the way she clasps his arm with the sort of desperate urgency usually reserved for the wilting heroines of harlequin romance novels. She's pushed herself up to kneel on the mattress beside him, desperately entreating him for—well, _something_. He's not exactly sure what she wants. But whatever it is, whether he likes it or not, John's awake now. He's groggy and still partway drunk and _grumpy_ —but awake. And apparently back on-call. And the first step in any disaster situation is to get himself an accurate sit rep. "Okay. What happened?"

Penelope gives another disconsolate sigh. "Your brother kissed me."

A quick inventory of the roster weighed against what he knows about his brothers, their ages, and their personal preferences suggests only two major possibilities, and Scott's got John and the bottle of cognac they probably shouldn't have split between them for an alibi.

" _Gordon_ kissed you," he hazards, just to make absolutely sure.

Penelope nods, blue eyes wide and guileless in the dark. Her gown for the evening had been a confection of soft purple lace and airy tulle, but she's since changed into a long camisole with a dressing gown to match, and these are both rendered in shimmering ivory satin. It only adds to the illusion of Penelope as a delicate and innocent English Rose, but John's known her _far_ too long to believe that this is anything but an act.

If "English Rose" can be considered a technical classification, then in Penelope's case it extends exclusively to the fairness her complexion, and no further. John's known Penelope to throw arms' dealers through plate glass windows and to vault chain link fences in pursuit of cyberterrorists. Penelope routinely outfoxes the foxiest of the criminal underworld, and does so in more than one sense of the word. Penelope is no more a shrinking violet than she is a ditzy socialite, even if sometimes she'll play the latter, and _sometimes_ —as relates to the inopportune exchange of selfies and assignations in what could apparently have been any _number_ of back stairways—John's not entirely sure that the ditziness is entirely an act. Even so, it's _incredibly_ rare for Penelope to act the damsel. Something isn't adding up.

"Okay," he says again. "Why are you in my bed about it?"

" _Your. Brother. Kissed. Me._ "

John rubs at his eyes again and wonders if this is possibly some sort of lucid nightmare. He doesn't drink often. He resolves to drink much less in future. "Yeah, I got that part. Look, is the implication meant to be that this was something not entirely consensual? _Clearly_ you've had a couple drinks? Penelope, if you're telling me I need to go thrash my little brother for impulsively sucking on your face, then: A—I'll do it, but I'll need to put pants on; and B— _pretty sure_ you could've handled that one yourself."

Penelope huddles miserably in her nightgown and shakes her head. "No," she protests, but weakly. "No, it was—we were _both_ —I mean, I _did_ kiss him first. I started it. That was me."

This is really about as far as it gets from John's general area of expertise. So he reverts to the basics.

"This was a bad thing?" he guesses, basing the assumption on Penelope's general air of distress and the fact that she's huddling miserably in her nightgown on the opposite side of his bed.

"It was _lovely_ ," she answers, mournful.

Oh, well, _obviously_.

John amends his assessment. "This was a _good_ thing."

"I don't know! It was— _oh_. I just—John, I think he's in _love_ with me. And I—I don't know—I didn't expect…" Penelope takes a shaky deep breath. "What if I _hurt_ him?"

John was not aware that this was a hazard of kissing, as a matter of course, and he winces a little at the mental imagery. " _Uh_. Well. I don't know about that, but I feel like I can reassure you about Gordon's— _um_ —general…uh…durability? I guess? He's pretty tough. I don't think you could've done anything to him in a back stairway that would've done him any, uh, any lasting harm." He pauses, amends, "I mean, not if you weren't actively trying to."

Penelope swats him on the arm. "Not like _that_. I mean…I mean what if this isn't what he wants it to be? What if _I'm_ not? What if I've taken the most terrible advantage? I wasn't _thinking_ about it, he was just _there_ and we were just _talking_ and then it just _happened_ and— _oh_. Oh, I don't _know_. If I broke his heart, I don't think I could bear it."

This is either a problem of perspective or a problem of scale, and John isn't certain which. This is really, absolutely not his area of expertise. "…is that…I mean, do you think that's likely?"

"I don't want it to be."

"Well, it sounds like that's a start, anyway." John hesitates a moment and tries to come up with something genuine, useful, and likely to make Penelope get the hell out of his bed. "Look, you know this isn't really my area. But I guess—just as general advice goes, I'll tell you what I tell anyone in an unfamiliar situation: don't be hasty, think carefully, and try not to do anything stupid. You'd be shocked how often people actually need to be told not to do anything stupid. Not," he adds hastily, before Penelope can catch up with the sentiment, "that I think you'd do anything stupid. Honestly, Pen, I think the fact that your biggest fear is that you might hurt him is the best indication that you probably won't. Okay?"

She's listened intently to this instruction, and seems at least a little relieved to be given a clear directive. "Do you really think so?"

"I really do," John tells her solemnly, and hopes that he's been sufficiently convincing. It's very late. He yawns pointedly.

"He's just dreadfully sweet, your brother."

"When he wants to be."

"I do like him quite a lot."

"I'm told he's fairly likeable."

"And he's very handsome."

"This family has reasonably good genes."

"And he's a _fantastically_ good kisser."

"I _really_ don't need to know about that."

"I would very much like to go kiss him some more. Do you suppose he's still awake?"

John pauses. This, actually, sounds like it goes against exactly the advice he's just given—but it would probably get her out of his bed. He wrangles with the answer for only a moment, before he settles on the careful statement, "I think if he's had as much to drink as you have, he's probably off sleeping somewhere equally as ridiculous as in my damn bed."

"So you think I should go find him?"

Categorically not, but—"I think you should get out of my bed, so I can go back to sleep."

"I suppose I should, shouldn't I?" The mattress jostles as Penelope clambers off it, but she doesn't quite leave. In the moonlight through the bedroom window, in her long white dressing gown, she looks almost ghostly. John's already settling back down, nestling beneath the blankets. "You've been very helpful," she whispers, finally taking the hint.

"Just doing my job."

"Thank you very much."

"Mmhm."

"Good night, John."

"G'night, Penny."

By the time the bedroom door opens and closes softly again, John's already halfway back to sleep. He wonders only briefly if he'll even remember this conversation in the morning. Privately, it's possible he hopes not.


	3. moonlight and krav maga

She's aware of the presence in her room well before he's aware that she's awake. The rhythm of her breathing doesn't change, and she remains perfectly, convincingly still, waiting to see what will happen.

When a hand fumbles over her shoulder towards her face, even in spite of her razor sharp awareness, hardwired instinct kicks in, and Kayo seizes the wrist of the intruder, and performs some complicated feat of martial arts: weight versus leverage versus six years of krav maga—versus Gordon.

And she's got Gordon pinned to the mattress with her knees bruising his biceps and her hand at her throat, before her brain catches up to her body and she recognizes the big brown eyes goggling up at her and realizes that it probably wasn't _her_ he'd expected to find.

Possibly she and Virgil shouldn't have switched rooms, but the moonlight through the window of hers was going to keep her awake, she just _knew_ it, and Virgil's always so accomodating.

Possibly the first thing she says should be " _Oops, sorry_ ", but it's very late, and even if she's wide awake, she's still annoyed to have been woken up, as she peevishly informs her stunned and startled victim, "I'm pretty sure I've taught how to block that."

"Not while I'm still half-drunk and looking for _Virgil_ , you haven't!"

Possibly that's fair.

Kayo glances at the clock by her bedside and notes the time. "It's quarter to three," she scolds, and is aware that she's still probably taking entirely the wrong tone for the situation. "What do you want with Virgil? Is something wrong?"

Gordon twists futilely against the expertly applied leverage of Kayo's hundred and forty pounds of weight. "Yeah, you're _breaking my arms_ is what's wrong!"

Kayo eases off and bounces a little as she sits back down on the opposite side of the bed, cross-legged in her proper set of cozy flannel pajamas, a wise choice in the drafty old manor. As an afterthought, she turns on the light. There are two doors into this particular guest room, one that leads out into the hallway, and the other adjoining another bedroom via a common bathroom. Gordon's come through the bathroom door and left this open behind him, though he's got to be chilly in a tanktop and a pair of cropped yoga pants. With the light on, she notices that his hair is damp, freshly showered, its ends whorled into assorted curls and cowlicks, untamed by the usual palmful of hairgel. A little too late, she offers an apology, "Sorry. Get a bit twitchy sleeping in unfamiliar beds."

" _No kidding_." Gordon sits up and melodramatically massages his throat, glaring at her. "You are a _maniac_."

"I'm head of security."

"It's _Penelope's house_!"

Kayo shrugs. "And somebody snuck into _my room_ and attempted to grab me. It's a good thing I was prepared to deal with that."

"It's _Virgil's_ room!"

He's got her there. She shrugs again, spreads her hands helplessly. "Well, I said I was sorry. What do you want with Virgil at a quarter to three in the morning?"

"None of your business," Gordon mutters grumpily.

Possibly not, but he's gone and got her curious now, and so she prods him in the ribs. "Head of securty," she reminds him. "Secrets are my business."

Gordon glowers at her. "Not _this_ secret."

This is going to be entirely too easy. "Oh, so you _do_ have a secret?"

There's a moment of silence to allow for the realization and he glares at her, as though it's taken thumb screws and torture to get this out of him. He huffs indignantly. "So what if I do?"

"You're _terrible_ at keeping secrets."

This is true, and Kayo can tell that Gordon knows it by the way his cheeks flush slightly, even as he protests, "I am not!"

Kayo's nails aren't manicured, but they're neatly trimmed and filed and she makes a pointed show of examining them. "Well, presumably you were coming in here to tell it directly to Virgil, whatever it is."

Gordon blinks at her. "…yeah, to _Virgil_. Everybody tells Virgil everything!"

Kayo shakes her head and offers some unsolicited advice, " _I_ don't tell Virgil anything, because everything I don't hear from the rest of you, I hear secondhand from _Virgil_ , because he's a gossipy bastard."

Gordon, by his own admission and by the eye Kayo had kept on the boys and the way they'd been drinking, is still fairly drunk. Kayo, being head of security and not particularly partial to alcohol anyway, is completely sober, hours away from the glass of champagne she'd had to toast Grandma Tracy's birthday. As such, she can practically see the gears turning in Gordon's head as he furrows his brow and narrows his eyes at her. "I don't believe you," he declares, eventually, either out of stubbornness or loyalty.

"Is there anyone else who would've been able to tell me that _you_ were the one who left a bacon double cheeseburger to rot in the back of Scott's car the summer before he left for college?"

There's a scandalized gasp. "That was _John_!"

Kayo scoffs. "As though any bacon double cheeseburger in existence could possibly survive more than half a minute in John's presence."

This is relatively rudimentary detective work, and yet coming up on a decade since the offending incident occured, apparently no one else had ever made that connection, John included. All the years he's taken the blame for the incident are down to a remarkable degree of absentminded spaceiness whenever he's actually on Earth. Still, beyond that, there's the fact that Gordon had told Virgil, and Virgil had told Kayo, and there's no other way she could possibly know.

Defeated, Gordon scowls. "…that _asshole_."

"Yeah, he can eat just about anything, it's very unfair."

"I meant _Virgil_." He pauses. "John too, though, honestly. I hope he gets fat when he's old. I'll laugh."

"Neither of them left a cheeseburger to rot for an entire semester in the back of Scott's car."

" _Accidentally._ "

Kayo waves a hand dismissively, because this is beside the point. "What I'm trying to say, though, is that you shouldn't have told _Virgil_ , because Virgil told _me_. If you had told _me_ , _I_ wouldn't have told Virgil."

Gordon cocks his head and squints at her. "Well, I didn't know you, then."

"Hypothetically, though. I'm just saying, Virgil's not the place to go with secrets. That'd be me. Head of Security. I'm good with secrets. Kept my uncle a secret for nearly five whole years, didn't I?"

"I guess."

This is maybe not the best example to lead with, in terms of her trustworthiness, but Kayo presses doggedly on. It's become a point of principle, now, that Gordon's got a secret and she wants to know what it is. "So what happened?"

"I don't wanna tell you."

"What if I can guess?"

"You're not gonna _guess_."

"Bet I can."

"Bet not."

"If I can't, how about I tell _you_ a secret?"

Gordon scoffs. "What do I care about your dumb secrets?"

Kayo smiles, secure in the knowledge that she's not going to be revealing anything of consequence to Gordon tonight. "Well, my _last_ secret was that I'm a blood relative to a supervillain. And this one? You wouldn't believe me even if I _did_ tell you."

Gordon shifts on the bed beside her, kicking the bedclothes down and burrowing beneath the blankets with a shiver. "How about if you can't guess, then I get your bed? I'm freezing."

"Virgil's bed," Kayo corrects primly. "…But okay. Yeah, sure. But if my nice warm bed is at stake, then you have to give me ten yes or no answers to ten relevant questions."

"Three."

"Five."

"Sold."

Kayo claps her hands together, brusque and businesslike. "Don't get comfy," she warns, and then starts in on her inquiry. "Is this a good secret?"

" _Hell_ yeah."

A _very_ good secret. That's a start.

"Is it something that happened recently?"

His enormous grin is a better and more immediate answer than his eventual, "Yup."

Well, that one was a bit of a gimme, but Kayo's feeling rather charitable. She narrows her eyes at Gordon, maintains the pretense of suspicion as she asks, "Is it a secret Virgil would've been surprised to hear?"

That one trips him up a bit and he seems to need to think about it for a minute. Even when he does start to answer, he still seems a little bit uncertain. "Y…hm. No, maybe n—hm. Well, but yea— _hmm_. Umm. _Hm_. Yes? _Yes_. Qualified yes."

Kayo folds her arms. "You can't have a qualified yes, unless you're going to qualify it for me."

Gordon, despite her warning not to do so, reclines against the heap of pillows mounded up against the headboard and rubs at his nose, as he clarifies, "He'd have been surprised about the _how_ it happened, maybe, not so much that it _did_ happen. I kinda. Uh. Kinda I told him it was gonna happen? Maybe. Sort of. Definitely he had a heads up. Tonight was gonna be, like, _the night_."

" _The night_?" Kayo repeats, probing, and hoping he doesn't notice that this is technically a question, and technically not of the yes or no variety.

Gordon gives her a pointed look to let her know she's not getting away with it—but then answers anyway. "Yeah, like _you know_. The _night_. Yes or no. Do or die. I'm gonna be _twenty-five_ in February, you know. Valentine's day. That's a whole quarter of a century. That's a whole lotta Valentine's Days."

Kayo shrugs. Her twenty-fifth birthday is only two weeks after Gordon's, and she hasn't imbued it with nearly the same level of signifiance. Age is just a number. "So?"

" _So_ , maybe I wanna spend the next quarter not being quite such a goddamn sucker, is what. Maybe I figured it's time I grow the hell up, a bit, right?"

She shrugs again. "Sure, right."

" _Right_." Gordon pauses and squints at her, suddenly suspicious and admitting that he hasn't really been keeping count, as he asks, "Is that five questions?"

Probably not technically. Kayo's pretty sure she only needs one more, anyway. Really, everything else was just confirming an initial suspicion, based on the very particular way the bedside light hits Gordon's jawline. "I think I have one more."

"So hit me, Kay."

"This big, quarter-century secret have anything in particular to do with the lipstick on your face?"

The _smack_ is audible as Gordon's hand flies to the side of his face, covering the mark of a shimmery pink lip print on his skin, glinting just-so in the light, bright and unsubtle and oh-so-obviously Penelope's colour, when one knows what one's looking at. Kayo doesn't wear a lot of makeup, but she knows what she's looking at. Slightly more telling is the way Gordon's suddenly blushing, his brown eyes wide and still a little bright from the alcohol still in his system. "Is that still there?" he asks, a sort of vaguely startled whisper. He pulls his hand away from his face to check his palm, though he hasn't even smeared the silvery little mark. "I _did_ take a shower," he tells her, almost apologetic.

"Yeah, well, you missed a spot." But Kayo grins at him, reaches out to give his blanketed knees a shove. "But _wait_ , though. So you _kissed her_?"

Gordon's not usually shy about much, but there's definitely something bashful about his smile, as he rubs at his jaw, glances at the palm of his hand again. "Yeah. Little bit. She started it, though."

Kayo feels her grin widen slightly, in spite of herself, feels the ache of it in her cheeks. "Dude, _nice_." She's not entirely sure what Virgil would do in this situation, but for lack of anything better, she holds her hand up for a high five.

For the barest moment, Gordon seems taken aback—but he brightens immediately and sits up to return the gesture, a solid, exuberant smack of his palm against hers, and now he's just absolutely _beaming_ about it. "Yeah," he says again, and Kayo can't actually recall if she's ever seen him quite this pleased. "Little bit."

And she's just as happy for him, too, and she pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them. This is turning into a proper sleepover, though really she ought to be getting back to sleep, and so should Gordon. Still, she can't quite help asking, "How was it?"

Gordon just drops himself back onto the pillows with a dreamy sigh. "Oh, _man_."

Kayo permits herself a giggle, at that. "That good, huh?"

" _Better_." He hums softly to himself, a tuneless little sound of absolute contentment, as his eyes fix on the coffered ceiling overhead. "I almost kinda don't wanna go to sleep," he says, though she can hear the yawn that wants to creep into his voice as he says it, "beacuse what if I forget? What if I forget about how goddamn good it was—and it was goddamn _perfect_ —or…orwhat if I forget about how it happened _at all_? Except it _definitely_ happened, though. It's just how I never would've figured that she'd _kiss_ me. But she _did_! She _totally_ did; she _did that_ , that was _her_. Penny. Penelope."

That must be the part that Virgil would've been surprised by, because even just by the way he says her name, it's always been an open secret that Gordon might want to kiss Lady Penelope. That the reverse might be true—a tiny, wary little part of Kayo is made just slightly suspicious by the notion, something about it trips some hardwired "Head of Security" pathway, makes her worry about the thought of him being taken advantage of—but of course she's not about to say anything. Not now, at least. "Well, if you want some more tangible proof, I'm pretty sure there's a little bit of a lovebite on your collarbone, too."

This is apparently not something Gordon had realized, though his fingertips go exactly and immediately to the slightly more permanent mark Penelope's left on his skin, so apparently his prospective doubts about his memory are unfounded. If he was blushing before he's absolutely crimson now. "Okay! Wow! Okay! Okay, _so_ —so! That's a thing. Guess that happened too! Oh man, I am _never_ gonna get to sleep now. I'm just gonna lie awake all night."

"Probably," Kayo agrees solemnly, and then kicks Gordon's knee gently from atop the blankets. "But as much as I'd like to braid hair and paint nails and talk about kissing, you should probably go lie awake all night in _your own bed_ , Gordon."

There's a slightly embarrassed pause. "I think I accidentally locked myself out of my room when I had my shower."

"Well, that certainly sounds like you." Kayo kicks him again. "Good thing your room has two doors." She points at the one that leads to the hallway. "Look, so does mine!"

Gordon whimpers melodramatically. "But it's gonna be cold."

Kayo smirks at him and gives him another solid kick. "Suck it up, loverboy."

The blond groans in the way that other people groan, when _he_ makes jokes, but he pushes back the blankets and heaves himself upright with a sigh. "I see what you did there."

"Mm _hm_. Get out of my bed, or I'll get you out myself, and if it comes to _that_ , then the hickey will be the _least_ of your bruises."

"It's not your bed, it's Virgil's bed," Gordon grumbles, but he goes, though he rubs his hands up and down his arms as he does so, and lingers by the door out into the hallway. Kayo's still sitting cross-legged on her bed, watching him, and she makes a little shooing motion as he hesitates. "Yeah, I'm going, I'm going…but…Kayo?"

"What, Gordon?"

"Thanks. For letting me tell somebody." He flashes her another quick smile across the room, as his hand finds the door handle and he pushes it open a crack. "Don't tell anybody else though, okay? I, um, I dunno how Penny would feel about that."

Kayo smiles back and nods, mimics the action of locking her lips and throwing away the key. "I won't repeat anything you've said," she promises solemnly. "Head of security, remember. _Very_ good at secrets. Cross my heart. Try and get some sleep. Long flight home after breakfast tomorrow."

Gordon nods and mocks a little salute in response. "Thanks, Kay. G'night."

"Good night, Gordon."

The door—one of three, actually, in Virgil's bedroom—closes softly behind him. Kayo remains sitting on her bed, cross-legged and listening intently, as his footsteps recede down the corridor. She strains her hearing against the sound of the wind outside and the creaks and moans of an old English house, but she doesn't hear the sound of his door opening, further down the hallway.

The third door in her bedroom belongs to the closet, and there's a soft knock from within. A moment later, Virgil pushes it open and steps out. Kayo tosses him the t-shirt he'd lost between the bed and the nightstand, before they'd been so rudely interrupted.

"Well!" he comments, tossing it over his shoulder as he makes his way back to his bed. "That's a development, hey?"


	4. fictions and pretexts

It's pure coincidence that has the pair of them running into another in yet another empty hallway, with everyone else elswhere, otherwise occupied.

But Penelope leaves John's bedroom and Gordon leaves Kayo's (Virgil's), and the configuration of the manor is such that it puts him directly in between her ladyship and her private chambers, and her, directly across the hallway from the door to his appointed guestroom. Whether or not she'd been lingering outside his doorway, weighing the merits of rapping her knuckles lightly on his door, just to see if he was still awake—it seems beside the point, now, as he proves he wouldn't have been there to hear her anyway.

Certainly neither of them expects the other—Penelope immediately wraps up the front of her long satin house coat when she realizes she's not alone—and yet there's a certain absence of surprise when he turns to notice her, alerted by some preternatural instinct to someone else's presence in the corridor.

And there's a moment. A few seconds, at least, of mutual indecision. The manor is dark, the only light is moonlight through the windows, silvering the snow that blankets the manor's rolling grounds. It casts the ivory of her nightdress into a much cooler shade of icy white, makes her look pale and ghostly and not entirely real. It washes all the colour out of his usually bright and eye-catching ensemble, makes deep royal blue into a shade of almost-black, and bleaches the contrast from whatever inanity he has printed on his shirtfront, not that she's interested in reading it.

It's a moment that _could've_ been followed by shy smiles and nods of acknowledgment and then an only _somewhat_ awkward passage by each other, so that whatever needs sorting out could be left alone and sorted out in the morning—but then, Penelope moves and Gordon doesn't. She approaches, all in her soft, virginal white, and he waits just exactly where he is, with his fingers still lingering on the handle of the door he's closed behind him.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asks softly, once she's near enough to earshot that he can hear her voice at a bare whisper, and near enough that she can see the goosebumps on his skin.

"Seems like it's going around," he answers, and is the first to drop his gaze, looking down as he rubs at the back of his neck. He's adorably sheepish as he admits, "Took a shower and then locked myself outta my room, actually. Your bathroom doors are tricky."

"It's a very old house," Penelope offers apologetically.

"Sure, maybe. But also I'm kinda dumb."

She gives an offended little gasp. "Darling, you're _not_. Don't say that."

He shrugs, and in a reversal of his appreciation from earlier this evening, she very much enjoys the movement of his bare shoulders. So much so that she can't quite stop her hand from reaching out to catch his elbow, as she proceeds to inform him, "I've the master key in my bedroom."

"Oh, nah, there's another door. I don't need—" he starts, and then stops abruptly, as her fingertips trail lightly along his arm, and she moves past him with the faintest rustle of ivory satin, the lady of the manor making her way to her bedroom. Gordon stands frozen for another one of those indecisive moments, watching her go, and then repeats softly to himself, "Oh, Christ, I am _dumb_."

And then he follows her.

The most crucial thing he could possibly learn about Penelope—and he'll have to learn it quickly—is that the pretense is important. The excuse, the reason, the plausibility to go with the denial. All too often, the subtext is almost as important as whatever it is she says or does explicitly. There's a certain decorous necessity to the reason she's given for leading him down the hall, because it would be just horrifically improper if she were upfront about her intentions. It's important— _vital_ , even—that when she comes to a stop in front of the doubled doors of her bedroom, and turns to look up at him with dewy dark lashed eyes, he realizes that they're still playing a very complicated game. "It may take me a moment to find it," she says, an utter picture of innocence, even if the sleeves of her dressing gown are slipping loose from her shoulders, and even if she doesn't pull them up as she continues, "And it's so terribly draughty in the halls, really, you'd probably best come in for a moment."

She watches him hesitate. "Just a moment?"

Her answering smile is arch and, for just a moment, as wicked as sin, before she lowers her eyes and demurs, "Well, as long as it takes."

It's been a while since Gordon's played any version of this particular game, but even when he played it in what could be called a competitive sense, he wasn't necessarily always the taller player. And Penelope, at least in the circumstances in which he usually encounters her, is almost always in five inch platform heels, which put her right up into his eyeline. Which is nice in its own way, and does a hell of a lot for the view—but getting the reminder that in her bare feet, Penelope is a bare five-foot-three— _that's_ a game changer. Whether it's obvious or not, there's such a thing as a height-advantage, in this particular game.

So it's a personally thrilling little luxury of being in love with her to be able to rest an arm against the crossrail of her bedroom door above her head. Leaning in over her, and finding that she doesn't shrink away from the half a foot of difference in their heights, but rises to it, lifts her face to look up at him. And there's a challenge in her eyes, daring and defying the way she's demurred so far, a denial of her role as the damsel. She's dainty and beautiful and exquisite in the moonlight, but there are lessons that she'll need to learn about _him_ , too. It's lucky that he's a good teacher.

Because the first and most important thing to know about Gordon is that his whole heart goes into everything he does, including everything he does in moonlit hallways, late at night, when everyone else is sleeping, and when he and his chosen companion should both probably know better. So there's more to it than just the natural motives in play, when he's the one to make the first move, brushing the backs of his fingers along the curve of her cheek, and gently pressing a kiss against her forehead. It's important to know about Gordon, that even amidst all the games and the pretense and assorted necessary fictions about locks and keys, he'll still never manage to be anything but honest.

"I gotta be upfront with you, Penny, I don't know what the hell I'm doing," he tells her, in a voice that's soft and quiet and, as she'll learn eventually, meant for her and her alone. The fingertips of the hand he's rested on the door drum a quick beat above her head, such that she feels it in her spine, where she's pressed her back against the wood. "And I dunno what's gonna happen on the other side of that door, except that I want it to be just whatever _you_ think it should be, Pen. Penelope. Just whatever you want. I just—please, just don't think you could disappoint me."

It's only been a few hours since the last time she kissed him, but Penelope had already found herself wanting to kiss him again. She hadn't expected to find herself _needing_ to kiss him again, but she does, and _desperately_. She has to stretch up onto her tiptoes and even then she has to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down to kiss him properly—but she does. Wholehearted and genuine and without even a shred of pretense. There's a soft little sound of sincerity from the back of her throat, a faint little hint of the desire that she can't quite help.

When she lets him go, it's with a toss of her hair over her shoulders, and her fingers feeling behind her for the handle of the door to her bedroom. Her other hand, whether she realizes it or not, still clutches a fistful of his shirtfront, and when she finds her voice, it's a trifle breathier than she wants it to be. "I don't know what you're on about, darling" she says, and pulls him along as she steps backwards, through the door of her bedroom. "I was only hoping for your help in finding a particular key."

He follows, and laughs as he kicks the door shut behind him.


	5. lilac and lavender

Her bedsheets smell like lilacs.

He'd know the scent of lilacs anywhere, because his mother had planted a lilac bush outside his bedroom window, a long, long time ago. Her sheets smell like lilacs. Lilacs smell like home. Her hair smells like lavender. _She_ smells like love.

And she tastes of it, too. Every glorious inch of her skin, the warmth of her, the _weight_ of her; her hands and her voice and her eyes and her mouth and her lips and her _laugh_ , free and easy and frequent. Gordon hadn't expected her to laugh so often, to be so easily delighted.

Hadn't expected her eagerness, either, but that's really the only word for it. She'd been eager and excited and insistent and _intense_ and he'd expected precisely none of those things. He certainly hadn't expected to be so thoroughly worn out, and to fall asleep so quickly beside her, with her fingers still brushing through his hair.

So he wakes to a face full of soft cotton bedsheets and plush feather pillows, the scent of lilacs overpowering the not inconsiderable hangover, at least for the moment. Her room at night had been all dark and cool and secretive, had felt like somewhere untouched and forbidden, though admittedly he'd hardly been paying attention to the room itself. In daylight—it's hard to sort out just what time of the morning it might be, because the sunshine filters through white lace curtains which mute the colour and quality of the light—the room is all trapped in pale gold layers of heavily draped fabric. Dark, regal wood and high, prettily patterned pink walls, a soft and dignified dusty rose colour beneath a vaulted white ceiling. The bed that constitutes his immediate environment is a massive, four-postered canopied thing, the sort that heavy brocade curtains can be drawn around, another layer of privacy beyond the security and solidity of the bedroom door.

Gordon hasn't actually ever imagined ever being on this side of Lady Penelope's bedroom door. Being a red-blooded American male, pretty much everything _else_ about the night previous had made it into his imagination—but on pristine, windswept white beaches in the tropics, with no one around for miles. Or the back of FAB1, parked somewhere overlooking the sea, beneath the moonlight, with its usual driver on another continent somewhere. Or the cockpit of TB4, which is ridiculous even just from a geometrical standpoint, and probably against some strict and very particular regulation, probably put in place with Scott in mind. But he'd never imagined his own bed, let alone Lady Penelope's.

It's a big enough bed that he almost feels a little bit lost in the middle of it, twisted up in white sheets and pillows and a big fluffy duvet that's warm and cozy and weighs probably about a (metric) tonne. It's a big enough bed that he has to sit up and look around, before he's quite sure that he's the only occupant. Stripped down to her barest and most intimate essentials, Penelope is a great deal smaller and daintier than he ever actually imagines her to be. It's a big enough bed that it seems possible that she might've gotten lost. He only feels a _little_ bit stupid, picking up the covers and peeking underneath.

He's been careful not to sit up too quickly, but the movement has still made him dizzy and a little disoriented, sets the pretty pink room to spinning slightly. This draws his attention sharply to the thirst and the headache and the vague sense of nausea; the collected symptoms of the hangover that's trying to bubble its way insistently up through the afterglow. Because there's _definitely_ an afterglow. There's definitely a joyous buzz in his chest and a warmth in his face and a sort of shell-shocked disbelief that has nothing at all to do with his latent blood alcohol content He's definitely not wearing even one single stitch of the clothing he'd meant to go to bed in, and this is definitely _not_ his bed. And if he doesn't _quite_ have a definite play-by-play of the night previous, he definitely does have sweeping, soaring symphony of sense memories that come together in concert as what's probably been one of the best nights of his life thus far.

And the morning that followed it gets just a little bit better, as the bathroom door opens.

Framed by the doorway, she's too beautiful to even believe. The mundane reality of the entire world falls away at the sight of her, because she just _can't_ be real. She wears the ivory dressing gown she'd let fall from her shoulders the night before, and it's nothing less than _radiant_ in the morning light, the soft sheen of satin against her pale, perfect skin. Her hair is a tumble of champagne blond curls, and for once her lashes aren't dark with mascara, but their natural pale gold. The blue of her eyes shames the sea and the sky, because Gordon knows his way around both, but her eyes he could get lost in probably forever. The way her rosebud lips curve into a smile when she catches him staring (because it's not like he can help staring) is the only thing that could possibly make her more beautiful than she already is.

"Good morning," Penelope says, and doesn't stop smiling. If she's the least bit embarrassed by the fact that she's clearly not wearing anything beneath her robe, she doesn't show it. It seems almost like she's only put the robe on in the first place to draw attention to the fact that she's naked beneath it, and this is very, _very_ unfair.

"Hi," he says, like an idiot. And then he just doesn't _have_ anything else, and a second attempt only results in, "…uh, y-yeah, hi. Hi."

Her dressing gown is probably tailor made to her measurements, but it looks like it's been made just a little bit long, with the way it trails along the plush carpet behind her. In fact, beneath the vaulted ceilings, she seems smaller than ever. Between the height of the bedframe and the height of the mattress and boxspring, it's perhaps a taller bed than might be appropriate for such a petite woman, but there's a setee pushed up against the end of it, and she steps up onto this as though it's the most natural thing in the world, climbs up onto the end of the bed. "Yes, hello," she says again, playfully now, though as an act of grace and mercy she adds a question for him to answer, throws a lifeline into the middle of what's barely going to be a conversation otherwise. "Did you sleep well, darling? It was such a late night, I didn't want to wake you."

"Uh huh."

"Hangover?" she inquires.

That's a good excuse. "Kinda."

"Poor thing," she murmurs, and then once again she's the one to cross the barrier, to reach out and brush her fingers lightly through his hair, which is probably a bedheaded mess, all untameably curly and cowlicked, fluffy at the ends. Her hand drifts downward then, and the palm of her hand finds his center of gravity, and all it takes is a slight shove to land him on his elbows, looking up at her. Her dressing gown slips off her shoulders again, entirely deliberate, but it's her eyes that command his attention, blue like the sea and the sky, the things he loves best in the world, except it might just be that Gordon loves her better than both.

And especially when she leans in to press a kiss against his lips, gentle and affectionate and genuine, and a miracle cure for all the roiled up doubt and anxiety about the aftermath of the whole situation, a reminder that he's here because she wants him to be, that this was—and _is_ —utterly and entirely mutual.

Her weight presses against him with a predictable suddenness, lands him flat on his back as his hands find the curve of her hip, the nape of her neck. And the hangover doesn't stand a chance for at least a couple minutes, against everything she is, and everything she _does_ , a sum total of interactions that end out with her, curled up against his chest with a contented sigh. Her hair smells like lavender, her face presses against his collarbone, her breath is warm on his skin, and he gets one last kiss as her lips brush against his throat.

"Good morning," Penelope says again, though she yawns after she says it, and cuddles closer. There's really nothing to do but keep his arms wrapped around her.

Gordon's brain finally realizes its services have been requested, and some semblance of wit returns to him as he agrees, "Uh, yeah. _Yeah_ , I'd say so."

The way she giggles at that pays out in a judicious little hit of dopamine which really, properly gets his brain's attention, and which means he'll do just about anything to make it happen again. His brain also provides the rather salient reminder that he'd had a little too much to drink last night, and that he's still dehydrated and headachey and nauseous and sore. And for as lovely as it is, the room is still all brilliantly painful white light, so he closes his eyes against it and takes a deep breath of lavender instead. Penelope's fingertips trace curves and curlicues where she rests her hand against his chest. Apparently she's equally willing just to stay like this, at least for a little while, because she hums softly to herself, quiet and contented, and makes a pleasant little noise of appreciation when he starts to card his fingers through her hair.

After a while, he's a little too drowsy to estimate how long, she shifts slightly, pushes herself up to rest her head on his pillow, puts her perfect, pretty face too close to ignore, especially when she pecks another little kiss against his cheek. But what gets Gordon to open his eyes and turn his head to look at her is the way she clears her throat and asks, "May I make a comment?"

It's entirely probable that she's able to feel the uptick in his heartrate, with her hand still against his chest as it is, but his resting heartrate is an athlete's 60 bpm, and so maybe she doesn't notice. "Sure. Just, you know, fill out a comment card and submit it to home office and it'll be reviewed by one of our quality assurance reps, and you should receive a reply in about four to six weeks."

She flicks the tip of his nose with a finger. "It's not a bad comment."

That's reassuring. "Oh, well, those I'll take directly."

"Mhm. I only wanted to say, as an overall experience, last night was rather more…cosmopolitan…than I supppose I'd ever imagined."

That takes a minute to parse, makes unreasonable demands upon his poor, put-upon brain, which had been enjoying the simpler demands of straightforward cuddling. It's one of the things he's always liked best about her, how complicated she is. How she refuses to dumb herself down, the way she phrases things as though she just expects that everyone else will rise to her level. Still. It takes him a minute to pick out the relevant concepts from this particular statement.

These are, in ascending order, "overall experience", "cosmopolitan"—which his brain handily translates to "good in bed", which is something he already knew, but is still thrilled to hear repeated out loud and by somebody else—and, most importantly, " _imagined_ ".

 _That's_ the idea he seizes on, breaking into a grin and drumming an excited little tattoo against her back, fingertips tapping out a cheerful little rhythm, as he requests clarification—" _Imagined_?"

The Lady at least has the decency to blush.


	6. comment and critique

Well. Of _course_ she's imagined this.

Half the time she runs into him, he's wearing nothing better than a wet suit. Frequently this is _wet_. The damn thing sometimes looks like it's been sculpted onto him, a classical study of the male form in shades of cerulean. He's a former Olympian. He's an efficient, compact package of boyish good looks, supreme physical fitness, and real, _actual_ heroism, wrapped up in bright blue with a sunshine yellow ribbon.

She's only human.

But before now she's always had to catch herself, always felt rather guilty if her thoughts about Gordon in particular had strayed too far into "cosmopolitan" territory. Penelope's always had his brothers for context, had to consider him as the fourth out of five. Second youngest. It's all relative. She's known him from the very beginnings of International Rescue, when there were questions as to whether he was too young for the job. She's almost of an age with his second eldest brother—John's only a few months older than she is, October to her December. But there are three years between her and Gordon and before now, her idle musings about the shape of his hips, or the curve of his spine at the small of his back, or whether or not it's true that swimmers tend to wax every last bit of hair off their bodies—it's always felt a little bit wrong.

The incidental answer to this last question is no, actually. Not _quite_ , anyway.

And so when he correctly catches her out for the sorts of things she's imagined, Penelope blushes and buries her face in the pillow, and abruptly feels her age. Twenty-seven doesn't have much of an impact to it, _really_ , but then, maybe it's his twenty- _four_ that's really hitting her.

He's _only_ twenty-four.

Only—

 _Her_ birthday: December 24th, 2034. _His_ birthday, Feburary 14th, 2037. It only looks like a three year difference at first glance. When one actually does the math—and she does this, quickly, in her head—it's actually only two years, one month, and twenty-one days. They're late enough in January that at this point it's a countdown of only those twenty-one days _until_ his birthday. Twenty-five. And anyway, it's all perfectly aboveboard and legal. They're both capable, rational adults, and if there'd been a little latent inebriation last night, it certainly hadn't been enough to invalidate the existence of excited, enthusiastic, entirely _mutual_ consent. If she'd been the one to lead the charge, she still hadn't gone anywhere that he hadn't been ready and waiting.

And perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising. In the moment, at least, it _hadn't_ been; it had all felt—well. Certainly better than she'd ever imagined. She'd never imagined such a glorious synchronicity. What she _had_ imagined, as a scenario, had always been rather more domineering, rather more…educational. For him. As far as naivete goes, it's _hers_ and not _his_ that's tripped her up. She'd been wrong to assume that he'd be anything like inexperienced.

It's a testament to the power of Jefferson Tracy's PR engine, that even IR's very own London Agent had bought into the image of his sons as five hardworking, kind-hearted, upright and decent boys from the American midwest. Wholesome young men. Boys who say "sir" and "ma'am", and "darn" rather than "damn", and who sit on the backs of tractors and gnaw on the ends of wheatstalks for no readily apparent reason, and absolutely don't do _anything_ like sleep with older women.

Never mind that Scott's been on the cover of GQ, _twice_ now, all kitted up in Armani and _smoldering_. And disregarding entirely the fact that John's hayfever is bad enough that just looking sideways at a stalk of wheat would probably close his throat right up. She has, on one occasion, over an accidentally open comm channel, heard Virgil employ language bluer than the blue of his uniform, such that she'd reflexively covered Sherbet's ears, and loudly scolded Parker when his answer had been " _Too fuckin' right, Master Virgil!_ "

And last night, Gordon might just have taught an older woman a thing or two. He certainly hadn't known anything less than _exactly_ what he was doing.

And currently his fingers are wandering idly down her body, in a way that makes her shiver at the lightness of his touch, makes her eyes snap open and her breath catch. His palm comes to rest gently at the the curve of her hip, warm and slightly calloused against the smoothness of her skin.

With her eyes open, she looks back at him, looking at her.

They're sharing a pillow, face to face. He really does have a lovely face, and it's nice to have an excuse to look at it. Penelope's curled herself up slightly, lying on her side, with the bedsheets and the duvet wrapped demurely around her chest. He's twisted off his back to face her, one arm beneath the pillow and the other free to reach out and touch, as they both continue to look at each other.

God, but looking at him again in the light of early morning, he does look just awfully _young_ , though.

" _Boy_ ," she accuses, halfway teasing, halfway wondering how old he would've been when last _he_ slept with someone.

"Girl," he answers, entirely unruffled and smiling at her now, as his fingertips make their way back upward, trailing up along her arm, brushing over her shoulder, pulling her hair back from where it falls across her throat. He plays along like it's an easy game of word association, and not meant to be an indictment.

" _Lady_ ," she corrects firmly, with a little of that guilt trying to creep back in.

"Mmm, I dunno about that one, last night there was kind of a bit more biting than I ever might've expected from a _lady_."

Penelope gasps, scandalized, and protests, "I didn't _bite you_." But it's almost a question, because she can't _quite_ remember.

And he grins, taps a fingertip against a _very_ distinctive bruise, marring his collarbone. "Kinda got some proof."

Oh.

Blood rushes to her cheeks again and despite her desire to present an arch, untouchable sort of air, Penelope can't help but feel a little flustered, hiding her face in her pillow once more. It's been a while since she did this with _anybody_ , let alone with anybody she's known for as long as she's known Gordon. It's not really time for a retrospective of her personal relationships, but suffice it to say, it's been a while since there was an "after" component to any of her mornings. Years, actually. She's deliberately not doing the math. It's possible that she's a little bit forgotten how exactly this part goes, and what exactly one is supposed to _do_ in the bright, drowsy haze of someone else's intimate company.

His hand leaves her back, and his fingertips brush gently through her hair. "You okay?" When she doesn't look up immediately, he adds, "I don't mind about the biting." And then, a little too eager to be anything but sincere, "I _really_ don't mind about the biting."

"It's not that," she says, and then hastily corrects, as she realizes she's responded to the less relevant question. "No—I mean, yes. I'm fine."

Gordon hasn't stopped looking at her, and there's a certain way his eyes narrow, just slightly, like he's trying to get a read on her before he says anything further. He hasn't stopped touching her, either, though there's nothing posessive about it. Just plain and simple affection. And it's with an almost uncomfortable level of insight that he asks again, "You sure?"

"Yes," she answers, definitive now. And then, because it would probably be bad form to start things between them with anything but honesty, she formulates a mostly-honest answer, and explains, "It's only that's it's…been a while, I suppose. Since I had anyone else…ah…here. With me. If you take my meaning."

It's useful about Gordon—has always _been_ useful about Gordon—that he's rather lacking in guile, and that his emotions tend to play across his face in the same instant he has them. And so his understanding is chased by thoughtful consideration, a furrow of his brow as he thinks to himself for a moment. She can almost see him winding his memory back, before he nods his appreciation of her situation. "Oh, sure. Yeah, I getcha. Few months for me, too."

This makes her feel slightly better in one way and slightly worse in another, because the last time she was really, properly intimate with anyone else, she was probably _his_ age. But Penelope's better at guile than Gordon is, and so her smile is automatic and convincing, as though he's put her immediately at ease with his admission of a similar statistic. And she's appropriately shy and demure as she looks up, and murmurs, "I hope—well. Rather, I suppose I'll thank you for making up for any degree to which I might've been out of practice."

"If you think you were, I _promise_ , I couldn't tell."

She can't help a little breath of laughter, shakes her head to herself. "Charitable of you."

"As though you need charity."

"Kind of you, then."

"It's a hobby."

Gordon pauses, then, and she gets to watch him push himself up onto one elbow, and then sit up in bed beside her, stifling a yawn and rubbing a hand through his hair. This is an absolute mess, all fluffy curls and cowlicks, and the daylight through the window finds every stray split-end and gives him a bedheaded golden halo. When he turns back to look down at her, he catches her staring up appreciatively, and grins. "Can _I_ make a comment?" he asks, mimicking the archness of her tone when she'd asked him the same.

And perhaps she'd been a little bit cruel to do so, because the idea of a _comment_ sends a sudden shock of cold down her spine, creates a little flutter of anxiety in her stomach. She rolls over onto her stomach to save face, and feigns a yawn as she nestles her face against her pillow again, and closes her eyes with a sigh. "If you submit it in writing," she tells him, lazily parroting back his own response, and hoping it'll result in a softening of whatever comment he feels the need to make.

"I can do that."

She feels it as he shifts his weight on the mattress beside her, and then the tip of his index finger taps lightly on her left shoulder blade before starting to trace lightly over her skin again. His touch makes her back arch just a little bit, initially, before she manages to relax into the subtle pleasure of it.

"Dear. Lady. Penelope…"

His fingers are deft across her skin as he dictates. Penelope isn't sure if the feeling is an accurate representation of his actual handwriting, but if so, his script is quick and tight and surprisingly loopy. She definitely feels the _e_ at the end of her name. "I think we can drop the 'Lady', darling," she murmurs.

"No, because I like it. Don't interrupt me, lady, my spelling's bad enough as it is. Hope. This. Morning. Finds. You. Well. Regarding. Last. Night's. Intimate. Congress…"

" _Congress?_ " She ignores the instruction not to interrupt and doesn't soften her offense at the technicality of the term.

" _Please_ , your ladyship, this is an official document."

"But _congress_ , though?"

There's a melodramatic sigh and then, "Fine, fine." His fingertip scribbles out an imaginary word on her skin, makes her shiver. "Regarding last night's… Spectacular. Fuckfest…"

" _Gordon_!"

"Wrong word again? You are just _very_ particular about language, Penny." He taps an ellipsis at the base of her spine, three quick dots like the S in SOS. "Okay, then. So: Amazing. Delightful. Magnificent. Fantastic. Ooh, yeah, _fantastic_. Love that alliterative emphasis. We're gonna go with fantastic, I think."

"Gordon." Penelope rolls off her back to look up at him, leaning over her with one hand braced against the mattress at her side. There's a grain of truth somewhere at the heart of what he's saying, but he's layered it over with nacre, as though it's a speck of sand in an oyster, in order to make it pretty and palatable. It's not that she doubts his sincerity. It's just that he's laying it on a little thick, and it's playing hell with her ability to detect the actual gravity of what he might want to tell her, whatever comment he might want to make. Anything that requires this much buttering up seems like it must necessarily be a criticism, and she's realizing that she'd forgotten how much she hates the vulnerability of this whole exercise. Still. Best to get it over with. "Regarding last night?" she prompts, and then hesitates just briefly before asking, "—was something wrong?"

Her anxiety, however slight, must tell in the way she looks up at him, because she watches his expression flicker from concern to realization, and he drops the conceit immediately, gets to the point. "No," he answers, and the hand that had been tracing words across her skin comes up to touch her face, the pad of his thumb brushing lightly over her lips. "Absolutely nothing was _wrong_. Honestly, Pen, I don't think I've ever _had_ a better night, and it's not like I haven't got notches on the bedpost for comparison. And _besides_ that, I've won an Olympic gold medal. I've been to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. I'm the fourth son of a billionaire. I save _actual lives_ on a regular basis, I am pretty much an authority on what defines a _good night_. And last night is _easily_ in my top three. I wouldn't change a thing."

This is exactly the sort of kindness he practices as a hobby. Kindness isn't something Penelope's ever been accused of, particularly. There's a certain _niceness_ about her, a polished politesse required by the sort of work she does, the sort of position she occupies. The gentle part of _genteel_. But _kindness_ —of the real, actual and genuine type being demonstrated here and now—Penelope's not sure she's ever known how to be _this_ kind of kind. Nor is she sure that she quite knows how to react to it. It's almost more than she knows how to handle. Too much about her is too sharp, too well trained to pierce through intonation to get at intention. Anything as soft as kindness shreds itself, a little bit, coming in contact with her edges. He's entirely too kind to her. Kind enough that the only thing she knows how to feel in response is suspicion.

And so she's already expecting the word _except_ , and though he hasn't said it yet, she isn't the least bit surprised when he does.

"—except…"

She shouldn't be so nervous about anything to which he'd take exception. In any other environment, she'd be more than equal to any criticism he might want to offer, any fault he might dare to find. But here and now, she's been stripped down to her very barest essentials, and there's someone relatively new in her innermost of inner sanctums, and it's impossible not to feel vulnerable, looking expectantly up at Gordon and waiting to fnd out what follows the "except".

"—except, it's only that I _kinda_ wish it hadn't happened on a night when _literally_ my _entire family_ are lurking around on the other side of your bedroom door."

 _That's_ nowhere near what she was afraid of. It's not even really at all to do with her personally, as much as it is to do with their current circumstance, which they're about equally responsible for. But even if it _were_ entirely her fault, his presence in her bedroom is a non-issue, not a problem. She blinks up at him, surprised that he thinks it would be. "Why?"

Penelope's noticed it before, that Gordon occasionally has a slightly puppyish quality about him, particuarly when confused. It's possibly down to the amount of time she spends in the company of a puppy of her own that she draws the comparison, but there's definitely something reminiscent of a poleaxed golden retriever in those big brown eyes. Especially when he cocks his head slightly to the side, puzzled.

" _Uh_. Well. I mean, if you're not worried, then I'm not worried, I guess—but there's gonna be some stuff that gets said if anybody sees _me_ leave _your_ bedroom. Like, talking of comments, there is gonna be some _commentary_. What with me having to get out of here and past the rest of my family, while I'm all, y'know, _déshabillé_ and whatnot."

This is preciously naive, and presupposes that Penelope would've let him in in the first place if she hadn't already known exactly how she planned to get him out again afterward—but _that's_ not the part of his statement that she gets caught on.

" _Déshabillé_ ," she echoes, not quite believing what she's just heard.

Out of everything that's happened over the past twelve hours, _this_ is what brings a flush of colour to his cheeks, that she'd call him out for his choice of words. He still attempts to pass embarrassment off as nonchalance as he explains, "It means, like, not dressed."

Penelope's back on firmer footing now, regaining her purchase and her confidence around the subject. This wasn't quite the education she'd intended to give him, but she takes a scholastic sort of tone nonetheless. "Borrowed from the French, to mean 'In a state of partial undress', yes, I'm perfectly aware of the definition of the word. Also employed as a noun to refer to a negligée, _also_ from the French, and of which I own several. It's just odd to hear _you_ say it."

His offended gasp is exaggerated to the point that she knows he's joking. " _Hey_. I went to college. I read books."

"…Books containing the word déshabillé?"

This doesn't do anything to diminish his embarassment, and now he's getting nearer to crimson, and making excuses, "Well, I dunno! I picked it up _someplace_. Back of one of the romance novels Grandma thinks are well-hidden. Word of the day somewhere. Lingerie ad on a billboard the last time I was in Paris. Except scratch that last one, 'cuz I've never been to Paris."

"You've never been to Paris?"

He drops back down onto his elbow, and then lies back down beside her, flat on his back, his hands folded behind his head. "Nah. Not a lot by way of maritime disasters, in Paris. Pretty landlocked. I've been to, umm…which is the one on the other side of the English Channel? Nice?"

"Calais. Nice is on the opposite coast." The hollow of his shoulder is an inviting sort of place, and she shifts herself up and closer to nestle against him, pleased by the automatic way his arm curls around her, pulling her close against the warmth of his skin. He gives off a remarkable amount of heat, and she enjoys and appreciates this.

"Calais, then. Calais was pretty all right. Not that I have much of the rest of France by way of comparison. I haven't been to Nice, either."

"Nice is—"

His grin flashes up, bright and sudden enough to interrupt her, and he cuts her off to say, " _Careful_ , 'cuz if you say ' _nice_ ', I might actually propose marriage. Wouldn't be able to help it. And I'd really hate to ruin a morning like this with you, needing to turn me down because I got excited about a pun."

There's red rising in her cheeks again, but she's prim and proper as she carefully finishes her sentence, "—nearer. To Tracy Island. You should go sometime."

"Nice is a little more likely than Paris, if it's coastal. Really, it's mostly water-based disaster that gets me anywhere worth going."

"Paris has the River Seine."

"Well, if the Seine decides to start fucking up, I'm sure I'll find myself in Paris."

There's something about his newly established willingness to curse in her company that's a little bit electrifying, though she hates to admit it, and wonders why he hasn't shown the least compunction about doing so, this upright, forthright boy who's _supposed_ to be repping the American Midwest. " _Disaster_ is really the last reason anyone should find themselves in Paris."

"But you admit I could maybe find the word _déshabillé_ in Paris? Or, uh, Calais?"

"You're probably more likely to find it in Paris—Calais—than anyplace else, but the fact of the matter remains: it doesn't sound like _your_ sort of word. _I'm_ déshabillé. You're…something else."

Gordon seems to accept that with a considered nod, and looks up at the canopy of her four-postered bed as he amends, "Buckass naked, then."

"Better," she agrees. "Certainly more accurate, considering your state of _absolute_ rather than _partial_ undress."

"You're one to talk. And I was just kidding, before, but for _real_ though: you are picky about words."

Penelope shrugs, not especially embarrassed by either statement. "Precision in language is important. But we've gotten off track. I hope you weren't planning on leaving my bedroom without taking at least _most_ of your clothes with you. They're on the floor somewhere, they haven't evaporated."

He still sounds embarrassed. "Well, no, but…I mean, this is still very much _not my room_. This is _your_ room. And I'm gonna have to get out of it, y'know, eventually. There's a lotta people on the other side of that door who'll have something to say about it, if I get caught in the act of leaving your bedroom at an indecently early hour of the morning, regardless of my own personal state of decency. I guess I just didn't know, uh, how you wanted to handle that whole, um. Aspect. The whole walk of shame, and whatever. _Not_ , crucially, that I think either of us've got anything to be ashamed of—but, y'know, still. Discretion."

"I'm an advocate of discretion," she agrees pleasantly, and sighs against his shoulder, contentedly settling against his chest and closing her eyes. "But it's still _indecently_ early. Considering the damages sustained by my wine cellar and liquor cabinet last night, I don't imagine you'd be running a terrible risk, if you wanted to leave now. It was a late night for everybody. There are hangovers to sleep off."

"Mmm. That's true. Mine included." His hand starts to rub gently up and down her back again, warm against her skin. After a few moments he reaches down and tugs the duvet up, securely over her shoulders. There's a gentle kiss pressed to the top of her head, and his voice has already gotten quiet, a little bit drowsy, as he says, "If you're telling me to stay, I'm staying."

 _Good boy_ , Penelope thinks automatically, though she manages to refrain from patting his head and saying it aloud in the sticky, gooey voice she reserves exclusively for Sherbet. Instead, she presses a kiss against his collarbone and murmurs, "I'm telling you to stay."

"Oh well, then I guess that settles that."

And for a while, it does.


	7. questions and answers

He doesn't mean to fall back asleep, but it's incredibly hard not to.

But falling asleep means waking back up again, and when he wakes up, it's from a headachey, nauseous, ineffective half-sleep, and it didn't last long enough to make a difference. Lying awake, he has nothing to think about besides the way that he feels, and he hasn't had nearly enough sleep to change the fact that he needs water and food and aspirin, and to maybe run a mile or two for good measure, just to help clear his head. He stares fixedly at the ceiling, because he's pretty sure if he looks around too much, the room will start spinning.

Turns out that being in love doesn't actually cure hangovers.

It turns out that the unimaginable perfection of this morning can't actually overcome the perfectly imaginable reality of just how much wine he'd had to drink last night, and Gordon's never really been a wine person. He has better luck with beer, except that's maybe just because beer is disgusting and he won't drink much of it. He'd very deliberately stayed away from much of anything by way of hard liquor, because he knows his limits. And while he'd wanted something in the nature of liquid courage before going to find Penelope so he could pour his heart out in her general direction, the strongest drink he'd had was just a single shot of Fireball with Virgil, necessarily smuggled from home, because American whiskey is not considered welcome on her ladyship's shelves.

Still. It'd only been the one shot.

…and quite a lot of wine, also.

And so last night doesn't quite cancel out this morning, and even lying beside Penelope, in her bedroom, with his arms around her while she dozes against his chest—he still has a hangover. He's still headachey and sore and vaguely nauseous, and the fact that anything as mundane as a hangover could intrude upon the morning after the best night of his life—it's enough to send tendrils of doubt creeping through him. Little tricks and tremors of anxiety, tripping him up as he thinks about last night, and about her, and about what's happened and how it happened and why it happened, and just what the hell he's supposed to do now, or even just from one moment to the next, now that he's awake again and still stark naked and holding her and not sure if she's sleeping and—

"Gordon?"

But it's okay, though, because her voice is so pretty and gentle and soft, and she pulls him a few inches back from that anxious edge, from wondering whether or not she really wants him here, or whether she's just been waiting for the right moment to tell him that this was all a mistake.

"Mmhmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Yup. Sure, uh huh, fine."

That's too many affirmative answers too quickly, and she's too smart for that. She lifts her head from his chest to look at him. Her fingertips drum lightly against his skin and she makes the careful observation, "It's only that I think you might be staring a hole through my ceiling."

"Well, I woke up."

"If you slept at all, it was for maybe three minutes."

Oh. He'd thought for sure it was longer than that, but then, it had also felt like just about no time at all, so he might not be the best judge. "Then I blinked for a really long time."

He doesn't make her laugh, but he does make her smile. And in some ways her smiles are better. He's been around her often enough to recognize that a lot of the time, her laugh is somewhat false, a necessary social lubricant. For someone who makes jokes to fulfill the same basic function, politely tolerant laughter is just par for the course. But there's something more genuine about her smile and it provides another tiny chemical rush of satisfaction.

And then she sits up beside him and stretches, gloriously unselfconscious about her body, not that her body is something she should be even remotely self-conscious about. She's gorgeous.

And he'd known that, obviously. It's not like he's looked at Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in all her aristocratic untouchability and never gone through the mental exercise of just what she might look like naked. Gordon broadly considers himself to be a good person—but the sort of good person who runs into burning buildings after orphans and who donates millions of dollars to save coral reefs and who drinks eight glasses of water every day. Not the sort of good person who looks at the most beautiful woman in the world and keeps his thoughts about her perfectly chaste and pure.

It's almost impossible to believe that the reality of her is better than anything he'd ever imagined, chaste or otherwise. By night he'd been enthralled by the feel of her, by the softness of her skin and the warmth of her hands and by the strength hidden behind her essential elegance. He hadn't expected that. He's never thought of Penelope as particularly strong. At least, not in a physical sense. She's always seemed too dainty, too delicate, too ladylike. She's reasonably fast and impressively nimble, especially for as often as she wears five-inch heels, but he wouldn't have thought of her as strong, per se.

But then, there are things you learn about a person when their legs are wrapped around your waist, and Gordon's enough of an athlete to perceive and appreciate what must be a fairly robust workout routine, to give a girl a core like that. Gotta be some yoga in there. Definitely some Pilates.

Before he can get himself in trouble with an extended daydream about Penelope's chosen exercise regimen, she finishes stretching and turns back towards him. "Not much for sleeping late, then?" she inquires, curious more than she is critical. "Personally, I've got a terrible fondness for a good lie-in."

"I get nervous when I don't know what time it is," he admits, a little sheepishly. "I mean—it doesn't matter. S'just…I dunno, I'm all hungover. And we're supposed to be outta here by noon. And—and I don't mean to keep coming back to it, but my entire family, Penelope. Right outside your bedroom door. My grandmother. We weren't supposed to get her anything, but like…happy birthday, Grandma! I slept with our London Agent."

"Well, if it helps, it was well after midnight before anything of consequence actually happened." Penelope tilts her head slightly (adorably), and seems bemused by the concept. "But then, it does beg the question—is that something she would consider a gift?"

Gordon shrugs. "She enjoys a good shake-up every now and again. There's a reason Grandma rhymes with drama."

On the topic of drama, her answering sigh is exaggerated, but tolerant. "Yes, because you're an American and you pronounce everything incorrectly." She reaches over and flicks the tip of his nose with an elegantly manicured fingertip. "And somehow I manage to like you anyway."

Out of everything that's happened between now and the moment he'd found her in the corridor behind the ballroom, this is probably not something that should make him blush, but he still feels warmth colour his cheeks, hopes desperately that she doesn't notice.

The way her hand moves to cradle his jaw might be her, noticing, but he also can't seem to help turning his face against her hand, kissing her palm. That makes her giggle, and that makes him grin like an idiot, another one of those warm waves of pure pleasure that keep knocking him off his feet, just when he thinks he might be starting to get his footing. It's not a bad thing, per se, but it does make it hard to get himself grounded, with respect to the current reality.

Because sure, he's imagined this. But he's never imagined it being reality.

Turns out that's actually a pretty meaningful distinction.

Gordon's heard her laugh a thousand times, but he's never imagined her giggling. He's looked her up and down and in the privacy of his imagination rather shamelessly undressed her from head to toe—but he'd never actually imagined her sitting beside him, completely unembarrassed by her body and intensely interested in his. He's imagined kissing her, but he hadn't ever in a million years imagined that she would be the one to kiss him, that she'd keep kissing him; that her kisses would have a hungry, needful kind of quality. He hadn't known that she's the kind of girl who would take him by the hand and pull him into her bedroom and proceed to dispel any illusions he might've had about what exactly happens in a lady's bedroom. In the present, it just makes him realize how much he doesn't know about her. How much he'd only ever imagined.

It makes a damnably practical part of him wonder if maybe he's not ready for the reality of her. Of this.

He reaches up, to touch her face the same way she'd touched his, and this time manages to brace himself when she smiles and matches his gesture, presses her lips lightly against the callouses on his palm. He feels that same giddy swell of excitement and warmth and affection and love—but manages to keep his feet. He swallows, and keeps his voice carefully light and casual as he asks, "Can I ask a question?"

"Demonstrably," she answers, obviously teasing. One of her hands supports her weight against the mattress where she sits beside him. The other has gone from cradling his face to brushing through his hair, attempting to tame all the curls and cowlicks and fluffy bedheadedness that he puts up with every morning. She hasn't got a hope in hell of making a difference without a palmful of industrial strength hair gel, but it's nice anyway, and he can't help but tilt his head towards her hand, like a puppy getting scratched behind the ears.

He closes his eyes for a moment and almost forgets that he's got something on his mind. He catches hold of it just before it slips out of his memory and looks up at her, asking again, "For real, though?"

"You've lately had your tongue in my ear, darling, I'm not sure why you feel the need to ask permission for a simple question."

"Well, maybe it's kind of a complicated question."

"Well, now you've got me curious. Ask."

"Why'd you kiss me?"

There's a part of him that's always going to be pleased when he says something that gives her pause, makes her stop and think. She's so smart and clever and self-posessed, one of Gordon's favourite things about her is the razor's edge of her wit, how quick she is and how easily she speaks—but it's also beautiful to get a couple seconds to watch her think. She's the sort of person with a naturally guarded personality and the naturally guarded expression to go along with it, and her reactions are minute, subtle things—but they're still there. For just a fraction of moment, she'd been surprised by the question. And she thinks about it for a few seconds, before she answers with a cautious question of her own.

"Would you settle for a simple answer?"

That she'd feel the need to preface it with anything makes his gut give a queasy little lurch, but Gordon muscles past it and nods, as he answers, "Penelope, I'll take anything you wanna give me."

She gives him another smile for the growing collection. This one is winsome and charming and almost a little bit like a smirk, only Lady Penelope is definitely not the sort of person who smirks, even as she says, "Because I wanted to, then."

Before he can even begin to question that answer, she's leaned forward again, kissing him as though she intends to demonstrate her active and ongoing desire to do so. She's good at it. It's almost a little bit beyond belief.

And he needs her to stop.

Not because he wants her to, exactly, but because the reality of her keeps taking his mind off the reality of everything else. If the entire world ended at her bedroom door, that would be one thing, and it would be a world he could probably be pretty content to inhabit til the end of his days—but it doesn't. He doesn't know what time it is or what's going to happen if he tries to creep out of here, or what he'd say or do if any single member of his family caught him leaving Penelope's bedroom. He doesn't know what exactly he's supposed to make of what's happened, and he definitely doesn't know what's going to happen next. For as much as he wants to stay lost in the daydream behind her bedroom door, the reality is, he's got a hangover. He has to leave in a matter of hours. He doesn't want this to be the way his family finds out. And he hadn't expected this.

So.

It doesn't take much to stop her, just his hand catching her face and his thumb sliding over the rose petal softness of her lips, interrupting her as she pulls back to draw breath. He tries again, asks another question, "You wanna know a secret?"

She lights up at this, and for being something like a scholar of her smiles, Gordon's learning that there must be thousands he's never even imagined. This one represents genuine intrigue, delight, and her hand comes up to wrap around his wrist. "I always, always want to know a secret."

This maybe isn't much of a secret, but it's a truth he feels he needs to get off his chest. Because this is real, and he never imagined it actually would be. There's an interpretation of events where this was never part of the plan. It feels important to be honest about that.

So—

"I didn't actually think this was ever gonna happen. You and me." Her brows quirk together slightly, quizzical, and he continues hastily, before he can trip over the truth, can muddle it up somehow, because he thinks it's important that she knows. "Like—I mean, I was always planning to tell you how I feel—that I have a thing for you. That I kind of always have. Not that I didn't think you knew that, but like…just that I meant it, y'know? But even then, I didn't think you'd—I thought that you were gonna, like, let me down gently. Tell me to get over it. Move on. I'm gonna be twenty-five. Figured it was about time that I should…you know. Grow up. Grow out of you. So I just—I wasn't expecting…"

Words fail him, because he doesn't know how to sum up the reality he'd never imagined. The word he's looking for is just "this", but that doesn't seem to cover it, and so he ends up trailing off, a little helplessly, as her smile fades. Those cornflower blue eyes widen with concern and her hand around his wrist clasps a little tighter, with the slightest urgency. "Is it too much?" she asks softly. "Did I—was this…?"

Neither of them have said it, but the way she trails off makes it impossible not to imagine the words a mistake in the silence that falls as she bites her lower lip and drops her gaze. Her hand falls into her lap and her fingers twist together.

That definitely wasn't what he meant and the hell with the hangover, there's a flash of vulnerability in her eyes and he can't allow it to persist. He's only seen Penelope look afraid once or twice in the entire time that he's known her, but this is often enough to know that he hates it.

So he sits up, even if it makes his head swim, and reaches out to her, trying to be reassuring as he takes her hand. "No," he tells her, and means it. "That's not what…Jesus, Penelope. Please, don't think that. That's not what I meant, I swear. I'm glad this happened. You and me. Last night. This. It's just—it's just I also don't know what this is. Or how it happened, or why, or what comes next." He shifts slightly, moving to sit up properly, facing her where she kneels beside him. He squeezes her fingers gently and tries to explain, "You kissed me, and that wasn't what I thought would happen. And everything that's happened since then is stuff I never expected. I'm just trying to understand."

It's to his credit, though he doesn't know it yet, that he makes her stop and think more often than most people do, makes her more careful than she might be, otherwise. He hears her take a deep breath, like she's steeling herself for something, as she lifts his hand and presses it against her bare skin, above the beat of her heart and between her unabashedly bare breasts. "Is it really so complicated?" she asks, softly. Her skin beneath his palm is warm, but her fingers wrapped around his wrist are cool. "I'm not in the habit of…of doing this…with just anybody."

Gordon is. And there's something about the way she says it that makes him feel like that's a bad thing. The fact that he's in love with Penelope is sort of the background radiation of his sex life—but it hasn't ever stopped him from occasional no-strings encounters with people who are essentially strangers, and who stay that way. This practice is functional, but unfulfilling, and never makes him feel the way he wants it to afterward. It's part of what he'd been thinking about when he'd gone looking for Penelope in the first place—about all the strangers who he'd never given a fair shake. People he'd liked, or he wouldn't have slept with them, but people who'd never been an option, as far as something more. Because of her.

He hadn't realized how different it would be to sleep with someone he's in love with. And he hadn't considered the possibility that she might be doing to him what he's done to so many strangers, and that this has been a one time thing, though he never would've done it if he'd known that going in.

Because he hates the thought that this could be an end and not a beginning.

And suddenly it seems appropriate that he's achey and tired and nauseous and hungover, and being sharply reminded of the fact that this is reality, and that things don't always work out in reality, which is why he never imagines it. Maybe that's his mistake. Maybe what comes next isn't anything at all. Maybe in reality, she's the sort of girl who just does this, not that he ever would have figured her for it, and he's an idiot for asking what's meant to follow. Maybe—

"Gordon," she interrupts, frowning just slightly now, though he hasn't actually managed to summon up the nerve to say anything out loud. "Stop doing that with your face."

That comes out of left field, considering the fact that he's not doing anything with his face—or he hadn't been, up until she'd said something about it, because now he feels hyper-conscious of his expression. This is frozen on his face now, caught somewhere between surprise and confusion and injury, at the thought that on top of everything else, she also doesn't like his face. Which is probably down to the fact that his jaw's too square and his nose has been broken and his eyes are a muddy brown instead of sky blue like Scott's or vivid green like John's. He's not sure he wants to know the answer, but an unfortunate streak of curiosity has him asking, "…what's wrong with my face?"

Her hands come up to cradle his jaw, lifting his chin as she looks at him critically. "Well, as of a moment ago, there was a look about you that suggested I'd kicked your dog or something equally horrid"

Now he's lost the plot completely. "…I haven't got a dog?"

"Metaphorically, darling, do try to keep up. For a moment you just looked so terribly sad and you really mustn't do that, because I can't bear it."

"Oh." Stupid face. He forces a grin and hopes it's at least somewhat reassuring. "No, I'm not—I mean, I'm okay. It's just, I guess meant what I said last night—before, I mean. Before this. That this could just be whatever you wanted, and I wouldn't be disappointed with whatever it was—even if it turns it that it's just the one night." Even as he says it, Gordon knows it for a lie, but it seems like a grown-up sort of lie to tell, so he commits to it. " Considering you're not in the habit of, uh. Of doing this."

"Oh!" Penelope's eyes widen, because her surprise is immediate and obvious and and one of her hands leaves his face, comes up to brush through his hair, cradling his jaw and preventing him from looking away. "Oh, no, no. Dearest—no. The crux of that statement was 'with just anybody'. This isn't—oh." She sighs, it almost seems like there's another of her smiles in hidden in it, though her expression hasn't changed. "I suppose I can't blame you for finding this all rather complicated. We've gone about things rather backwards, haven't we?"

"…have we?"

"Yes." Her tone is definitive now, as is the way she kisses him again, as well as her answer, when she draws back and her eyes find his. "You're not just anybody, is what I was trying tell you," Penelope murmurs, and she's brought herself close enough that it only makes sense to hold her, as she insinuates her way into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck, the bedsheets around his waist are the only thing between them. "I certainly don't want this to have been just one night, Gordon. Really."

There's another giddy swell of warmth up through his chest, but less like the sort of wave the crests and crashes, and more like the sort that just washes slowly up against the shore, again and again and again. "Me neither," he answers, and finally feels confident enough to maybe kiss her back, a little bit, and then a little bit more, now that they seem to be defining their terms more clearly. Gordon really wishes he knew the time, because just one night is starting to seem like it could also be and additionally one morning, and he's starting to forget that there's a world beyond the bounds of her bedroom. Starting to forget that there's anyone else in the world but her. Starting to forget there could be anything like a consequence to what's starting to seem like the most obvious next step.

But then she stops, just as he gives in and topples back onto the mattress, back against the softness of her lilac-scented sheets, with the warmth and the weight of her bringing him down. He's rapidly losing the ability to care about what this is or how it happened or why it happened, in favour of only caring about whether or not it's going to happen again. It seems imminently, incredibly possible—right up until the moment where Penelope stops, actively in the act of settling her weight just above his hips. And she smiles, though this is a smile he's seen once before, wicked in its innocence. He'd had her backed up against her bedroom door, on the brink of the moment that's brought them this far, and she'd smiled just like this.

"May I ask a question?" she inquires, as though the question that follows will concern nothing more serious than the weather, as though this is any time to be talking about the weather.

Her hips move and then one of her hands moves, and the gasp this pulls out of him turns into a slightly anguished groan halfway through, as his hands find their way to her waist and try told hold her still. "Make it a quick question?" he pleads.

"Two quick questions," Penelope agrees, neatly altering the terms of the deal, as though there's anything he can do about that. Her index finger traces lightly down his sternum as she asks the first of these. "When we do this properly and the right way 'round—-would you rather I took you out for your birthday, or for Valentine's Day?"

It's not nearly as quick a question as he'd hoped it might be, but at least it's got an easy answer. "Entirely your call. Next question."

Penelope laughs at that, delighted and genuine. His hands on her waist start to move up her body, more or less of their own accord. "Fair enough," she answers, blithe and unconcerned as she leads into the next question. "Then the only other thing I need to know is, Paris or Nice?"

This time he's not sure if the wave that knocks him over is because of the way she'd laughed, or the way she cants her hips slightly, the exquisite movement of her body against his. The distinction doesn't seem like it matters any more than the distinction between Paris and Nice. And he has no choice but to give her an honest answer—

"Penelope, I couldn't give a fuck."


	8. interlude: secrets and silence

The mattress bounces beneath the sudden addition of another person's weight and this is probably a concern to be addressed to the lady of the manor. John rolls over in bed with a dim memory of last night's intrusion, groaning in protest and shielding his eyes against the sunlight that's managed to find its way into the room around the edges of heavy brocade curtains. He's expecting the lady of the manor, invading his bed again with some other hideous romantic triviality, so it's a surprise to find that it's Gordon who's bounded up onto his mattress, a pair of big brown eyes goggling at him expectantly.

Given that Gordon is emphatically not the lady of the manor, John hasn't the least compunction about grabbing hold of a one of the myriad pillows on his bed, and hitting his brother in the face as hard as he can.

Which is admittedly not tremendously hard, given that he's hungover and it's too early in the morning, and there's gravity to contend with. Gordon still yelps and topples off the bed. This is a better result than John had actually hoped for, and now he has an extra pillow to pile on top of his head, as he burrows back beneath the blankets in a vain attempt to go back to sleep. This is probably a futile effort, because the most likely reason that Gordon's here is because it's time to leave—time to get up and get dressed and get airborne and then get back to the island and then back to orbit and then back to work—but for at least a few more moments John can inhabit the fantasy where he's allowed to sleep until his head stops throbbing. A groan turns into a growl and he snarls at his stupid little brother, "G'way."

"John, c'mon."

One of Gordon's hands comes ferreting under the covers and finds John's face in a distressingly short amount of time. The last time John bit anybody, he was four and it was Scott, but there's a second time for everything and this seems at least as offensive as the time Scott scavenged his Lego model of Shadow Alpha-1 in order to build an absolutely hideous GDF flier. At the memory of the way their mother had told him off, John manages to refrain from biting his little brother, but it's a near thing. He settles for rolling over, and pulling the blankets up over the pillow covering his head.

Gordon just circles around to the other side of the bed, pulls up the blankets and lets a criminal amount of cold air in. "Johnny, this is a goddamn emergency, I need to talk to you. It's important."

John doesn't believe that for a second—but despite his skepticism, there's a real urgency in Gordon's voice, and it plays at the horrible hardwired instinct of the first responder, and has him lift his head from his pillow and glare balefully at his little brother. "What." And then remembering that there are at least four other members of the family that Gordon could be bothering right now, he grumbles, "Go find Virgil."

"I can't talk to Virgil, I can't trust him. And I can't talk to Scott because he'll kill me and I can't talk to Alan because he's an infant, and I can't talk to Kayo because I can't find her, so I've gotta talk to you. John, please?"

This might actually have more in common with the time John bit Scott, because it sounds almost like Gordon might legitimately be in trouble. There's that unmistakeable urgency, betraying the fact that something's happened, though emergencies are John's business, and he's still not sure what Gordon could offer that would qualify. John's aware that he's not the natural first choice as far as consultation on Gordon's problems. The top of that list is Virgil, followed closely by Kayo. Scott (despite his apparent proclivity towards fratricide) and Alan (depsite his infancy) both probably rank above John, as far as Gordon's problems are considered, emergencies or not. So this has got to be something.

So with a sigh, John pushes himself up, sits upright in bed and rubs at his eyes. This does nothing to alleviate his hangover, and he needs a shower and aspirin and water and food and an excuse not to have to fly over twelve thousand miles back home. Gordon's sat on the floor beside the bed, practically vibrating with anxiety. "What?" John asks, trying to curb the obvious irritation. "What could possibly be this important?"

Gordon takes a deep breath, apparently steeling himself for the admission of some world altering truth. When he finally finds his voice, it's in barely a whisper that he admits, "I slept with Penny."

This time, John's got the leverage to really, properly hit him with a pillow.

* * *

They're well over the Pacific when the call comes through on her secure line. This is surprising, as five out of the six people who would call her on her secure line are flying in Thunderbird Two, and she can see the big green bulk of the other craft over her shoulder, as she flies a lazy escort alongside the rest of the family.

A glance at her control panel tells her that her comm lines are still patent, so this isn't some unexpected tech failure, but something else.

And it turns out to be a call from the sixth person, though it's only been a few hours since they left Creighton-Ward Manor behind, and Kayo hadn't expected to hear from her ladyship quite so soon.

"Lady Penelope," she acknowledges the call, and a tiny hologram of the London Agent pulls her attention to the center of her cockpit. "Everything all right?"

"Perfectly. I had hoped for a private word."

It doesn't get much more private than Thunderbird Shadow's secure line, but something about the circumstances seems a little bit peculiar. Kayo knows something she might not be supposed to about Penelope, and it takes a particular effort to keep her tone carefully guileless, as though she isn't aware of just exactly went on between Penelope and Gordon in a back stairwell of Creighton-Ward manor. "Of course," Kayo answers graciously, and mutes her main comm channel, just to be absolutely sure what follows stays as private as promised. "What's up?"

Penelope is tiny, but exquisite in the ensemble she'd worn down to breakfast that morning—a plain ivory sweater dress, with three-quarter length sleeves and a high collar. A simple black belt cinched around her waist, black woolen leggings, and slouchy black suede boots with a modestly low heel. Her hair is twisted into an elegant chignon, and even if her ladyship has never been anything like Kayo's type, she's undeniably gorgeous. And she's prim, proper as she crosses her legs where she sits, presumably somewhere private. Her voice is careful as she begins, and she speaks slowly, such that Kayo can tell how carefully she's choosing each word. "There's been…a development…of a rather personal nature, between—between Gordon and I."

Even tiny and in hologram, there's an unmistakeable flush of colour to Penelope's cheese, and Kayo can't help but grin at her, because it's rare to see the lady flustered. "Well, your ladyship, if it would spare your blushes, he did already tell me. He could barely contain himself. It might as well have been Christmas, the way he was carrying on."

There's a beat of shocked silence, and if it's rare to see the lady flustered, it's rarer still to see her absolutely stunned. And she's plainly horrified as she exclaims, "He did what?"

Kayo blinks, because this level of obvious horror seems disproportionate to Gordon's admission that he and Penelope had kissed. This level of horror seems to indicate that Gordon could've gone on to tell her something else, something worthy of a lady's shock and horror at its disclosure. There's a calculated silence of her own, before Kayo cautiously answers, "—he told me that he kissed you?"

"…Oh." There's no errant strand of hair to brush back from her face, but Penelope's hands fidget nervously anyway, one passing her temple, the other smoothing prudently over the skirt of her dress. "Well, yes. I suppose I can't blame him being excited about that."

Kayo's beginning to suspect that it may have just been a kickoff to a rather more scandalous main event, but Penelope is a friend, and despite Kayo's proclivity for collecting secrets, for now all she's collected is a suspicion. "Congratulations. He's been carrying that torch for so long you'd think he was still at the Olympics."

Penelope gives a gracious little nod and then boldly forges on, apparently intent to maintain a veneer of professionalism over what's clearly a personal issue. "Yes. Well, all I wanted to tell you is that neither of us are quite ready to be—public, about the whole state of affairs."

The phrase state of affairs echoes gleefully in Kayo's head, and she can't help but feel a certain giddy amusement at the thought of Lady Penelope and Gordon, navigating the early stages of a relationship, if that's actually what's about to happen here. "Oh, well, naturally not."

"As such, there's the possibility that he and I might continue to engage in some—rather clandestine contact over the next month or so, probably through private channels, and it had occured to me that this is something that might ping on your radar. I just thought it prudent to give you a polite heads-up."

Kayo nods, mimicking the same professional demeanour. "Much appreciated, your ladyship."

"I'm very grateful for your discretion."

"Of course."

Penelope clears her throat primly, and her hand idly pats her hair again. "Yes. Well. I hope you have a safe flight home. Do give everyone my best wishes and I suppose I'll hear from you next when something horrendous happens."

Kayo grins and mocks a little salute. "Sounds about right, Lady Penelope. Have a good afternoon."

"Likewise."

The call cuts off, and in the silence of Shadow's cockpit, alone with new information about Lady Penelope, Kayo permits herself a giggle. And then, over a secured, thrice-encrypted digital channel of her own, she fires off a quick message, plain text, and for one other person's eyes only:

V, you are not going to BELIEVE what I just found out. it's great. tell you later. xoxo.


	9. birthday boy

The package waits at the foot of his bed.

When Gordon wakes up, rolling over and stretching, he nearly kicks it onto the floor. It teeters at the corner of his mattress before he manages to sit up, stretching out to snag it back from the edge. It's a rectangular box, flat-ish, and plainly a present, by the extravagance of the ribbon tied on top. It's got a certain weight to it, but it's not terribly heavy for its size. Considering the fact that Gordon wakes up at 5AM every day, whoever brought it in must be both an impressively early riser and impressively sneaky. He immediately suspects Kayo, but Virgil can also be surprisingly stealthy when he puts his mind to it.

Someone in his household is in on this, there's no doubt about that, but right at the moment it seems like a secondary concern. The package isn't from anyone on the island.

There's an envelope tucked between the pale yellow ribbon and the cream coloured wrapping paper, and the handwriting that's rendered his name in glimmering golden ink is achingly familiar, though Gordon's not sure if he's ever known her to handwrite his name before.

At this time of year, at this time of day, it's not quite dawn on the island. Usually he'd have bounded out of bed by now, out of the t-shirt and shorts he'd slept in and into a pair of jammers, to jog down the pool and swim a hundred laps or so, racing the sun over the edge of the horizon. Instead he's just sitting still and silent, as minute after minute ticks past five o'clock, holding an envelope with his name on it, written by the hand of the woman he loves. Lifting it to feel the weight of the paper, he can catch the scent of her perfume. Turning it over and peering closely at the seal on the other side, there's a perfect, shimmering print of her lipstick. There's absolutely no ambiguity about the fact that it's a gift from Penelope.

It's his twenty-fifth birthday, and on any year prior to this one, he'd probably still have the impulse control of a toddler when presented with a birthday gift first thing in the morning. This one's different. He hasn't even gotten past the seal on the envelope, caught up in the question of how long ago it was last in her hands.

He's spoken to Penelope almost every day since their fateful encounter at the end of January, but the last time he'd seen her had been waving up at TB2 from the long drive of Creighton-Ward Manor. He'd left her bedroom that morning, and the touch of her hand on his face and a brief, tender little kiss goodbye had lingered in his memory for a whole week afterward.

Not that getting to talk to her almost every day hasn't taken the edge off. When they'd finally gotten home to Tracy Island and everyone had dissolved back into routine, back to the semi-ordered chaos of their lives, Gordon had gone to his room and found a message waiting on his personal comm: the encryption code to access an embedded sub-channel within Tracy Island's comm systems, a direct connection to Penelope's own private line.

She'd been adorably smug about that, and wouldn't tell him how she'd done it.

And then she'd wanted to know how the flight home had been, if he was feeling better, what he planned to do with the rest of his day. If there'd been any single thing she could've done to reassure him that it hadn't just been one night (and additionally one morning), it had been that. Her interest had been genuine and she'd been happy to talk and pleasant to talk to, just chatting about nothing in particular, until something had come up on her end of the call, and she'd regretfully had to go.

And it's only been a few weeks, but she's still found her way into his routine, such as it is. Different time zones, unreliable schedules, peppered with occasional thirty-six hour shifts dragged out across every corner of the world—somehow, at the end of every day (or its nearest approximation), they've still managed to talk to each other. It's starting to become the way Gordon marks time, because lately whatever passes for one of his days doesn't feel complete unless he's talked to Penelope at the end of it, curled up in bed with a comm resting on the other pillow, trying very hard not to fall asleep in the middle of the conversation, and failing as often as not. Thankfully she doesn't seem to mind.

But it's still been three weeks since he'd last seen her, and now he's got an envelope in his hands, rich with the scent of her perfume and with the print of her lips over its seal. Having a crush on her had been one thing; Gordon's always looked forward to opportunities to see Penelope, always anticipated that little skip and flutter of his heart at the sight of her. But having something like this between them, and knowing that it's mutual—seeing her again is starting to become an urgent necessity, because the ache in his chest from missing her feels pretty dire.

If the outside of the envelope is causing him these kinds of problems, he's beginning to think he might not survive whatever's actually on the inside.

There's a bladed multi-tool sitting on his bedside table, and Gordon reaches for it, thinking about every birthday card he's ever torn open over the past quarter century. The envelope itself is heavy, ivory coloured paper, and when he slips the blade in between the slightly open edge of the seal, it slices crisply through the top of the fold in a way that's intensely satisfying, and which preserves the kiss she'd placed on the seal. The whole thing is going to be very carefully stashed away in a box at the top of his closet, along with an assortment of other treasures from the course of his life—hospital bracelets, his first pair of goggles, a pressed flower from the bouquet laid atop his mother's casket—but for now, he pulls out the card she's sent.

This is just as subtle and tasteful as the envelope, a plain card with a daffodil embossed on the front of it, and then more of her handwriting inside. Gordon's world is all digitally rendered text and hishandwriting, when he has the occasion to use it, is a hasty scrawl, all capital letters, rendered in print so it's as easy to read as possible. Penelope writes with a flowing, elegant script, clear and distinct, and it's impossible not to hear her voice in his head when he reads what she's written.

Happy birthday! I imagine this finds you in the very earliest hours of your day, and I hope you don't mind that this is how I most like to imagine you. In approximately twenty-four hours, I shall see you in Paris. I'm afraid I've given you a tremendously selfish gift, and taken measures to ensure you're in a state fit to be seen. I do hope you enjoy your day. Your birthday is entirely your own, and please do with it whatever you will—but remember that Valentine's day is going to be mine, and I assure you I intend to collect every moment I'm owed, once my part of the world catches up with yours. Have a wonderful day, darling. Here's hoping the world manages not to spin off its axis without your attention.

Yours,  
Penelope

She's occasionally dotted the i's with hearts. These are rendered in pale blue ink, same as the rest of the text, and are tiny, perfect little things that must have taken an incredible delicacy. As soon as Gordon finishes staring at the card, it's goingdirectly into the box for safekeeping. He rereads it two or three (four) more times, and then gently slides it back into its envelope, and goes to lay it on his bedside table. He pauses, suddenly dismayed by the state of his bedroom, and his bedside table in particular. Shoving the collected mess off of his bedside table to make a clear space for the card solves the problem, but only temporarily. He's going to need to clean his entire room.

And he hasn't even gotten to the present yet, though by now he has well-founded suspicions about what this is.

The wrapping paper is a soft cream colour, subtly textured, embossed with flowers yet again. Gordon's more careful than he thinks he's ever been, unwrapping a gift, and the heavy white paper gives way to a matte black box, sturdy and tightly closed, until he goes to open it and there's the brief but unmistakable resistance of magnetism, before a hidden clasp pulls open and the exterior of the box reveals gleaming gold inside. If he hadn't been sure that the whole thing was expensive before, he is now.

The villa as a structure cost upwards of ten million dollars. The island, as a piece of property, was about the same, though getting it ready to accomodate five highly specialized military craft was a process that ran into ten times the cost of both. His family's entire existence rests on a bedrock of wealth that Gordon's had at least a decade to get used to, but he still grew up in his brothers' hand-me-downs, riding a secondhand bike around dirt roads in the American midwest. Within Gordon's memory, a birthday party at the local pizza place was the sort of thing their family splurged on, and private islands weren't something any of them dreamt of.

Gordon still gets a little self-conscious, encountering anything that's obviously expensive. So the box in the middle of the bed makes him uncharacteristically nervous, despite the fact that he also handles explosives on the regular and saves lives for a living.

"Holy shit, Pen," he mutters to himself, opening the box the rest of the way. He finds himself holding his breath as he carefully starts to unwrap the pale white tissue paper that swathes the contents.

He unpacks the box, lays out a suit jacket and slacks, a waistcoat and tie, a crisp white shirt of impossibly soft silk, with mother of pearl buttons down the front, but not on the cuffs, which is fine because she's included a pair of cufflinks. These are softly brushed gold, subtly monogrammed with his initials, and represent the only things in the box that aren't inky black, purest white, or a subtle, eggshell ivory—until he gets down to the very bottom, and finds a final parcel, wrapped in gold.

The scarf is satiny silk, heavy in his hands and cool like water, and a deep, royal blue, except in the places where its floral pattern is gold, yet again. It makes him think of sunlight dappled over deep water, and it's beautiful and satisfying and perfect. He stares at it for a long few moments more, wondering if she's always known him like this, and hoping one day he might know her just as well.

Eventually Gordon clambers out of bed and starts to clean his room.

The sun's well up by the time he's finished. The first thing he'd done had been to carefully tuck Penelope's card safely away in the box in his closet, but then he'd been diverted by the state of his closet, clothes all over the floor and haphazard on their hangers. That had taken some work to set right. Then it had been a question of gathering up all the laundry that carpeted the rest of his bedroom floor, and wrangling two hampers (lights and darks, even) out into the hallway. Then there'd been some general straightening up, the collection of a rather shameful amount of trash, and finally he'd made his bed.

He debates about vaccuuming and dusting, but it's his birthday, and this is probably the longest he's ever waited to properly get into a birthday present. If this is how she expects him to be kitted up for Paris, then he'd better be damn good and sure that he meets that requirement, and if anything needs to be taken in and tailored, he'd better have that sorted out well before her Valentine's Day.

Except it's not even remotely necessary, because everything fits. Everything fits better than he actually knew his clothes could fit, short of being his uniform, which is tailored from top to bottom, that gets replaced every six months or so, and his measurements are retaken every time. That's probably where Penelope came by her information, though Gordon wonders if she asked for it outright, or if there's been some surreptitious ferreting around in Tracy Island's servers for the relevant data.

Still. However she came by her information, if there's anyone in the world who he'd want to have the measure of him, it's her. He hadn't ever thought of the phrase quite so literally, but as Gordon carefully adjusts the cuffs of his shirt and does up his cufflinks, he feels a deep, incredible pleasure at the thought that she knows every last inch of him already.

She also knows what to look for in a suit, apparently, because despite his usual reservations about formal wear of any sort, the whole ensemble is also incredibly comfortable. And, as he steps into his newly cleaned out closet for a look in the mirror, he comes to the unsurprising conclusion that he looks good. Damn good, even.

Good enough that he's still preening in front of the mirror and trying to figure out which shoes he's supposed to wear, when his comm rings on his desk, the clarion tones that indicate a call from TB5.

"Happy birthday," is the initial greeting, when Gordon picks up the call. His elder brother's heavenly blue avatar materializes from the elbows up in almost-lifesize atop Gordon's desk, newly cleared of assorted detritus and boasts a commanding view of the rest of Gordon's bedroom, such that John actually blinks, looks past Gordon and around the room itself. On the second pass of his double take, he seems to recognize that Gordon's rather sheepishly dressed to the nines at approximately half past six in the morning.

There's a beat of silence, which is impressive, because it's genuinely difficult to catch John off his guard. Gordon grins and hooks his thumbs in the lapels of his jacket and gives them a flick as John looks him up and down, appraising.

"Wow," John comments, eventually. "Adulthood finally caught up with you. And only seven years late."

Gordon's grin widens and he flicks a little salute at his brother. "Yeah, d'you know, I woke up like this? One of you could've warned me."

John shrugs. "I don't know what you expected me to tell you, I've been an adult since I was four."

"See, you joke about that, but I'm pretty sure there's pictures of four-year-old you in a three piece suit."

"Four-year-old me had an excellent tailor."

"Sure you did." Gordon hooks an ankle around the base of the chair in front of his desk, pulls it out, and drops into it. There's some give to the jacket of his new suit, a little bit of elasticity through the shoulders of the jacket and all through the trousers. It's all slim fit, cut close to his figure, but it moves with him, isn't tight and confining. Reluctantly, he concludes that he's going to need to change. He's going to need to pack. "What does twenty-nine year-old you have for me this morning, aside from birthday greetings, Jaybird?"

"That was it, actually." Gordon arches a skeptical eyebrow at him and this is enough to get John to clear his throat and clarify, "—or, well, since I've already got you on the line for birthday greetings, I just wanted to be sure you'd given Kayo all the correct clearances to sub into TB4 if she needs to. I've already cleared her for Pods A and B, so I've taken you off the roster for the next two days, rotated her into flex. She'll fly with Virgil if he needs back up. Assuming I haven't had to send him elsewhere, Scott's going to drop you off in Sydney right around 3AM tomorrow morning. You've got a seat booked on Fireflash for a flight out at four, and it should put you in London three hours later, barring any of the typical disasters associated with members of our family attempting to fly commercial. Tracy-One will be waiting at Heathrow, and from there you should land in Paris right around half past seven in the evening, local time."

This is all rattled off dryly, clinically, as though it's just another mission briefing and not something John's specifically gone out of his way to manage, a complicated suite of travel arrangements, on top of accomodating Gordon's forty-eight hour absence from IR's roster. Gordon blinks at his brother, nonplussed. "Johnny," he says, genuinely surprised and more than a little bit touched, to the point that he uses the nickname his brother hates without actually intending to bug him with it, "You did all that already?"

"Well, you're bad at it. And it's your birthday. And don't call me Johnny."

"Aw man, John! Jeez, that's just…I mean, that was just really nice of you, bro. Thanks." There's more or less been a moratorium on birthday gifts amongst their family for the past decade or so. Still, occasionally there'll be a small gesture made as an exception to the rule. Virgil will make a painting. Alan will bake a cake. Scott will bring home a particularly good bottle of whiskey. This is one such occasion, and it's nice, heartening. Gordon makes a mental note to pay John back in kind, when his thirtieth birthday in October rolls around. "Seriously, John. Thank you."

Gordon's not exactly sure where TB5 is at this exact moment in time—several hundred miles above the surface of the Earth, and probably somewhere on the other side of the planet—but even at distance, John's never been one for effusive displays of affection. He shrugs a little awkwardly and waves away the gratitude. "You're welcome," he answers, and then abruptly changes the subject, "Is that what you're wearing?"

Even when he's going out of his way to be nice, it's hard not to mess with John, "Obviously it's what I'm wearing, J, I'm wearng it, aren't I?"

John, true to the pattern they've established over Gordon's twenty-five-years of life, resolutely ignores him. "From Penelope?"

Even hearing someone else say her name brings a flush of warmth to his face, and he nods, rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah. Uh, yeah. For tonight. uh, I mean…tomorrow? Which will be yesterday by the time I get there. Never mind. I mean, you know—the whole thing with me and her—"

At this point, everyone knows. Sort of. Some people know more and some people know less, and John, rather against his will, actually knows more than anybody about just what exactly exists between Penelope and Gordon. Someone else knows enough to have delivered her birthday gift to his bedroom, but Gordon's put a pin in that one for now. For all he knows it might've been MAX, hacked into and hijacked by Penelope, who really seems to know her way around Tracy Island's computer systems a great deal better than she should. Neither here nor there. It's still awkward to talk about it, because it's something that feels like it should still be secret, clandestine. At least part of it still is.

Because all everyone else knows, for the most part, is that Gordon had asked Penelope if she'd join him for dinner on his birthday and Penelope, in a startling and historic first, had agreed.

Opinions about this run the gamut. Gordon, in an atypically adult fashion, has been attempting to play it cool, casual and nonchalant, and as though a date with Penny is no big deal, and not the actual highlight of his entire adult life.

But then, this is something of a gambit, a bit of a double bluff, considering he'd slept with her not even a month ago.

Because of course nobody suspects that, except for John, who doesn't suspect so much as he knows. And he only knows because Gordon told him, explicitly, in a blind and unbecoming panic the morning after. Or the morning of, depending on how one tallies these things up. Gordon and Penelope. Him and her.

"Yes, you and her." Brusquely, businesslike, as though that's all he wants or needs to hear re: Gordon and Penelope. This isn't really John's department, and if Gordon weren't in dire need of a confidant, he'd enjoy making John squirm. As it stands, he's mostly been keeping mentions of him and Penelope to a bare minimum, outside of the logistics. But then, maybe because it's Gordon's birthday, or maybe because it's just a relevant question, John clears his throat and tentatively inquires, "—how's it going, with you and her?"

Even however many thousands of miles away he might be, and even though he's asked, Gordon's pretty sure he can see his brother bracing himself for the disclosure of sticky, intimate details. Gordon, because it's his birthday (and he's an adult) and because John's actually asked, mercifully keeps it short, "Oh man. In a word? Phenomenal. In two words, fucking phenomenal. No, yeah, Johnny. It's real good. Really goddamn good."

"Well, that's…good. Yes. No, of course. Of course that's good. Good. I'm glad."

Gordon grins. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Oh, shut up." That's more like it. He and his brother share a moment of rare, companionable silence, and then, "Really though, that's what you're wearing?"

Gordon's sat down at his desk and put his bare feet up on the desktop, tipped himself backward up onto the back two legs of his chair, balancing. He'd found a halfway solved Rubik's cube in the process of tidying up his room, and he tosses this idly from hand to hand. He gives himself a cursory once over, self-conscious for only the briefest moment, because objectively he looks incredible. "Uh, yeah? Pen picked it out, of course I'm gonna wear it. What's wrong with it? Full-disclosure, I will take any and all criticism very personally and also it's mybirthday. So don't be an ass."

It's unclear whether or not this has an effect on what John says next. Knowing John, probably not. "Where's your tie?"

The tie Penelope had sent is plain black wool, a skinny straight thing, not that Gordon knows much from ties, except that despite knowing his way around most nautical knots, anything too much more complicated than a rather sloppy four-in-hand knot tends to escape him. There's something about tying a knot around his own neck that causes some sort of mental block. He doesn't imagine it makes much of a difference. A tie is a tie. So he shrugs. "Still in the box. I was gonna—"

"If you tell me you were planning to wear a clip-on, then I don't care if it's your birthday, I will come down there and kill you."

Gordon freezes in the act of tossing his Rubik's cube back and forth, eyes widening slightly at his brother. "Jesus, Johnny."

John looks down at him in a way that's only possible from the bounds of low earth orbit, arms folded. "You're masquerading as an adult, you can tie a half-Windsor."

"I super can't, though."

"It's not hard. Go get your tie, I'll teach you."

Gordon complies, returns to his chair with tie in hand. He shrugs out of his suit jacket, pops up the collar of his dress shirt beneath it. "Scott's already tried this," he warns, draping the tie around the back of his neck. "He gave up on me. Scott gave up on me. It's some sort of mental block. I'm a terrible student. It won't work."

"It would impress Penelope."

Gordon perks up slightly where he sits and gives the end of his tie a hopeful tug. "Well, in that case, have at it, Spaceman."

In fairness, Gordon does try. Between the pair of them, they have to contend with mirrored images of each other, Gordon's left-handedness, and John's stubborn refusal to believe that his brother just isn't following.

"We let you handle explosives," he laments. "You're expected to save lives."

Gordon undoes the travesty of a knot he hadmanaged and shrugs. "I mean, to be fair, I do both those things pretty damn well. Thanks for trying, though."

This is meant to be the place where his brother graciously admits defeat. His brother doubles down instead. "Oh, no no no. No, I'm not beaten yet. EOS, load another diagram. Okay. Obviously youcan't do actually do this right-handed and reports of your ambidexterity have been greatly exaggerated. We'll try—"

It's lucky it seems to be a slow morning, as far as global crises go, because it takes twenty minutes. Eventually, through sheer grit and determination on his brother's part, Gordon manages a passably tidy half-Windsor. John makes him undo and redo this several times before he's satisfied, and then makes Gordon get up and take a few steps back from his comm, so he renders more completely in hologram. It's funny to think of his image, high up and far away in virtual space aboard TB5. He wonders if John's using the main commsphere for this, if he's evaluating a digital version of Gordon that's been doubled, tripled in height. The thought makes him grin.

After a minute or so, John seems satisfied. "Shoes?"

Gordon looks down at his bare feet. "I was trying to figure out shoes."

"Black, leather. Not too shiny. Black dress socks."

"I don't own any black dress socks." This is a point of personal pride. Or so he'd always thought, anyway. "My black socks have hot pink rubber ducks on them."

John sighs and lifts his eyes to a higher plane of the heavens than he exists on himself, making some silent plea for mercy from whatever he considers a higher power. Maybe the World Wide Space Station. "Left side of the top drawer of the long dresser in my room."

Gordon nods as he drops back into his chair, and plans to wear the rubber duck socks anyway. "Gotcha." He changes the subject before John can get suspicious about his socks. "You coming down later? For cake and ice cream at least? It's my birthday."

"You've mentioned. I'll try." But there's a hollow ring to the promise. Now that he's solved the problem he'd initially been presented with, Gordon can already tell that John's losing interest, that his attention's being pulled away, back towards the world he revolves around, the world that sometimes must seem like it just won't keep spinning without him. Brotherhood with John isn't really something that's best exemplified over birthday cake and ice cream. Instead it's best looked for in half-windsor knots and the management of complicated airline travel, borrowed socks and sensible advice. "You'll probably want to get some sleep at a decent hour, before you have to fly out."

Sensible or not, this advice is hard to take from someone who sleeps for two hours at a time at six hour intervals. Gordon waves a hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah."

"I should get back to work."

That's probably true. Gordon's never been entirely clear on what John's day-to-day entails, but it's probably necessary that he gets back to it. The world doesn't stop just because it's Gordon's birthday, even if Gordon's birthday is sufficient occasion to get John to stop, at least for a little while. That his brother's taken time out of his extranordinarily busy day is another one of those little gestures that means more than a gift ever could. "Thanks for everything, man."

Again with the shrug and a wave that only seems dismissive if you don't know John well. "Don't mention it. Happy birthday, Gordie. Good luck, tonight."

Gordon kicks his chair back up onto two legs again and tugs at his newly and neatly tied half-Windsor in salute. "Don't need it, John."


	10. english rose

Six hours is plenty of time to pick a dress.

Because it has to be a dress, obviously. It's taken her the first two out of six hours to rule out the possibility of a slim, tasteful pantsuit, because she has many of these and is secretly more at home in trousers than she is in skirts, but of course it's the skirts that are expected of her.

And she does _so_ hate to disappoint.

Of the dresses she owns, and this is not an inconsiderable number, she's narrowed it down to the black ones. The little black ones, specifically. Not the _littlest_ of the little black ones, because most of these aren't actually tasteful enough for a lady (capital L or otherwise), but the medium to large little black ones. So that's only about a dozen that need to be gone through, sorted out, ordered by preference, and then tried on for good measure.

"Six hours is _plenty_ of time to pick a dress," Penelope tells Sherbet, as she steps out of the fourth out of twelve options, and throws it onto the _maybe_ pile. "It's just that it _does_ need to be the perfect dress, Bertie, and I have entirely too many perfect dresses to choose from."

Sherbet is in his usual place in her dressing room, ensconced on a chaise lounge sized appropriately for a dog of his stature. His opinions are less important than he thinks they are, but she'll solicit them anyway. She's moved on from any of the dresses that require discernment of colours, anyway. As she takes a moment to crouch down and rub at his ears, he gives her an exasperated little huff, and then a begrudging lick of her wrist. This is just a reminder that she hasn't picked out a perfume for tonight, either. Eau de Pug is not an option.

Penelope sighs to herself and selects the fifth out of a dozen dresses.

Her dressing room is a study in elegant opulence. It had been a bedroom, once upon a time, but it's been thoroughly retrofitted. Closets line the walls, with doors of cut glass mirrors. There's a window with a settee pushed beneath it, hidden by tasteful lace curtains. At the opposite end of the room her vanity is haloed by lights she can adjust in brightness and temperature, depending on where she's going and what the light will be like when she gets there. The center of the room is dominated by a glass case, housing all manner of accessories. The room is all neutral ivory, silver and glass. A crystalline chandelier hangs overhead. Soft music plays from omnipresent speakers. She has a second cup of tea waiting on her vanity, a bowl of strawberries, a plate of shortbread. It's half past ten in the morning. She means to leave the manor at half past three, to be in Paris by seven.

And she needs the _perfect_ dress.

"Do you know, Bertie, it's just _dreadfully_ unfair," Penelope says aloud, as she attempts to wriggle her hips past the bodice of the next dress on the roster. This dress is _not_ the perfect dress, because it seems rather more snug about her hips than she remembers. She gives up before she even has it all the way on, and lets it fall back to the floor and steps out of it as she laments, "All these _years_ he's spent, being so absolutely _infatuated_ with me. And I've only had…three weeks? _Scarcely_ three weeks. I've scarcely had _three weeks_ to try and catch him up. It's not _fair_ , Sherbet."

It was one thing to know Gordon liked her. It's been quite another to find out that she likes him right back, because it turns out that there's quite a lot to like.

Not that she hadn't _known that_ , of course. Of course, Penelope's _always_ liked Gordon, it's very difficult _not_ to like Gordon. But it's another thing entirely to _like_ Gordon. Because now she's discovering all manner of things to like about him, beyond the obvious. Beyond the broad shoulders and brown eyes, the blond hair and the sunshine smile, there's a depth to him that she'd always been _aware_ of, but hadn't ever really _thought_ about.

She's always liked that he's funny, but now she likes that he can make her laugh. She's always liked his kindness, but now she likes how deliberately he goes out of his way to be kind to her. She'd even liked his perpetual flirting, but she likes it even better now that she's permitted to flirt back with no compunction. And she likes to talk to him, but she especially likes to talk to him at the end of a long day, or in the early hours of the morning before a long day gets started. Or in the middle of some tedious social engagement, or _whenever_ , really, at whatever times of day the ongoing mismatch of their timezones happens to align. It's half past ten in the morning in England. This means that it's coming up on midnight on Tracy Island, and the end of Gordon's day. Usually they've managed to talk to each other by now.

And so she'd like it if he'd call her, but she's not sure she should expect him to. It's his twenty-fifth birthday, after all, and he's probably spent the day with his family, or however much of his family could be spared from saving whatever parts of the world needed saving. She hopes that he's had a good day. She hopes that her birthday gift to him was well-received, and that she hasn't given offense. She'd hope that it fits, but she knows that it does, because that's not the sort of mistake she makes. He might already be asleep, because he's going to have to leave at some wretchedly early hour in order to fly back along the curve of the Earth, stretching out the length of the fourteenth of February, so that they can spend it together.

He probably shouldn't see her before tonight, anyway. In order to land the full impact of the perfect dress (which is not five, six, or seven, and _especially_ isn't eight, which makes its way past her hips, but seems to find her bust an insurmountable obstacle), it's probably best if Gordon doesn't see her before she meets him on the runway of a private airport, just past sundown, just outside the City of Light.

Her ninth dress lands on the maybe pile, and she gives number three another shot, before dismissing it out of hand. Sherbet toddles off his little settee and goes to whine plaintively at the door, plainly exhausted by his ladyship's quest for the appropriate couture.

"Off with you, then, little traitor," Penelope mutters, as she cross the room and holds open the door. "I suppose you'll just have to see it in the tabloids."

Sherbet departs and Penelope sighs rather tragically. She wraps herself up in her white satin dressing gown, adjourns to her vanity and her cup of tea. She seats herself on the plush velvet cushion, closes her eyes, and takes a meditative sip of lightly sweetened Earl Grey. Then another. And eventually her teacup returns to the saucer and Penelope gets to her feet, suddenly inspired. Her steps across her dressing room are light and quick, and she slips out the door.

The manor sprawls, that much is true, but it never feels quite so big or quite so empty as it seems to on a weekday morning. February isn't much for sunshine in dour, dreary old England, and so as Penelope makes her way to a certain fateful back stairwell, she's a little disappointed to find the place is rather drab in the grey English daylight. As Penelope descends the stairs, by the light of mid-morning, the wood paneled walls seem stodgy instead of warm and secure. There's the unmistakable sheen of tarnish about the suit of armor that stands in the corner, and the velveteen settee tucked away beneath the staircase itself seems as though it's been tucked away in such a place because it's grown rather dingy and worn, and started to show its age in a rather unbecoming fashion.

The hem of Penelope's dressing gown trails along the parquet floor beneath her feet. There are two doors into the stairwell, one leading into a corridor connecting to the ballroom, and the other leading further into the manor, back towards what used to be the servants quarters. Creighton-Ward Manor is big enough that she hasn't had occasion to be back here again since—well. Penelope crosses to the settee and sits herself down, remembering the way her gown had rustled softly when she'd sat here the last time.

She closes her eyes to shut out the sunlight. She reclines back against the velvet curve of the divan, and casts her mind back to that night. She remembers how she'd wanted to be alone, right up until the moment Gordon had shown up, and then she'd been glad he was there. Not for any reason she could name, but it had been unmistakable, the way she'd felt when she'd first seen him. It's this feeling that she's trying to summon up—that fluttery warm sensation that she'd imagined was just the wine.

But then he'd sat beside her, and then they'd talked. And then he'd fallen silent and she'd realized just exactly what he was trying to tell her. And then she'd kissed him. And then he'd kissed her. And _then_ —

And then.

Something had come unbound then, whatever exactly it was that existed between them. It had gone from a question to an answer, become something real and apprehensible, something the both of them could feel. His hand at the small of her back, her fingers twisted in the front of his shirt, and the way he'd held her, kissed her and _kept_ kissing her, like there was nothing else in the world he could possibly have wanted. It's more than possible that that was precisely the case. It's down to the amount of wine she'd had that she doesn't remember it better, but without the wine to loosen her inhibitions, Penelope privately doubts it would have happened at _all_ , and what a tragedy _that_ would be. If it hadn't happened, then she wouldn't be here, caught up in the memory of him, for lack of anything better, because tonight can't come soon enough.

It's been lovely to talk to him. Really it has, it's been a part of her day she hadn't known was missing. She's privy to more information than most of the world about International Rescue's movements around it, and it hasn't been terribly hard to keep tabs on Gordon. Best of all, she likes to call him at the end of his day, and listen to him ramble about wherever the world has taken him, whatever he's had to do. All that casual, apparently effortless heroism. Whatever she's doing, she'll find an excuse to stop, and she'll creep off to some private corner of wherever she is, and just listen to him, appropriately rapt with attention. Frequently he talks himself to sleep during the course of these calls, because saving the world is a tiresome business, and Penelope is always secretly delighted at the thought that hers is the last voice he hears, whether he knows it or not, a softly whispered " _good night_ " and the gentle click of her compact as she closes it tight.

But after nearly a month, just talking isn't quite enough any longer. When she needs to return to the place beneath the stairs to lose herself in the memory of kissing him, when she wakes up in the morning to a bed that's big and bare and empty, when her heart aches quietly at the thought of being held again, touched and caressed and _cherished_ —it's been too long. Tonight will be a beginning, more than anything else, but it will also be the end of the weeks they've spent apart, and Penelope's all _afire_ with impatience.

Impatience is the ladylike word for it, anyway.

And as she opens her eyes and breathes a soft sigh of something that can only be longing, she also comes to a decision about the perfect dress.

Back upstairs to her dressing room, decisively, past the dozen scattered dresses that she'd _thought_ were options, and to the closet that contains the thirteenth, the one she _hadn't_ considered because thirteen is an unlucky sort of number, and she can't abide bad luck on a night like tonight, when she so wants everything to be perfect. She shrugs out of her dressing gown, lets this cascade to the floor at her feet. She pauses for a thoughtful moment, thinking about Paris. Then she deftly undoes the clasp of her bra, slips out of it and drops it into the heap of satin.

The thirteenth dress is black. It's also so plain it could be mistaken for _severe_ , a sheath of inky darkness. There's some stretch to the fabric, a little bit of give, but otherwise it clings tight to her curves. The skirt of it is narrow and straight, nothing flirty about a hemline that covers her bare knees. The bateau neckline is high, and bares her throat, her collarbone, but nothing further. The bodice is fitted (in a way that makes her acutely conscious of her bra, lying on the floor), but the sleeves are long, covering her wrists. Looking at herself in the mirror, for a moment she doubts her choice—but turning, looking over her shoulder; immediately she changes her mind.

Her perfect dress is backless, a deep v that plummets to the base of her spine, the bare skin of her back framed by those long black sleeves. The skirt, so modest from the front, is slit along the seam, high enough that her thighs peak out between the pleat when she moves, turning slowly to get a proper look at herself. Her hands go to her hair, in a loose chignon at the nape of her neck as she gets ready, and she undoes the bobby pin that holds it all together, untwists the tumble of her freshly washed curls. Her hair falls loose over her shoulders, and it becomes immediately apparent that she won't be wearing it up tonight. There's something just too pretty and feminine about the way she looks with it down. The dress is perfect, but only because its severity allows her to be soft by contrast. The austerity of the front belies the generosity of the back, and as Penelope completes another slow revolution in the mirror, she smiles to herself.

Before she can start in on her choice of shoes, there's a soft knock on the door. Penelope immediately kicks the soft folds of her dressing gown over top of her discarded brassiere, and turns away from the trio of floor length mirrors with which she'd been engaged. "Come in," she calls, and seats herself primly at her vanity once again. She needs to choose a purse and and whatever jewelery will best suit her severe black dress, something simple. She needs to make some essential decisions about her makeup. Obviously it will be crucial to draw a great deal of attention to her lips.

Parker steps into the room and Penelope feels herself straighten up, involuntarily. Seated, with her back to the door, there's a slightly creep of embarrassment up the curve of her spine, because from behind there's utterly no ambiguity about the intentions with which one wears a dress like this. Watching his reflection in the mirror as he enters the room at her back, Parker's as much a contrast in her bright and elegant dressing room as she is in her stark black dress. He's in a pair of dark corduroy trousers, an old cableknit sweater in thick ivory wool, beneath his trusty leather jacket. He wears his usual leather driving gloves. By the faint whiff of old petrol and engine oil that he brings with him, he's just up from the garages.

For a moment their eyes meet in the mirror and there's something curiously wistful about his expression, the threat of rain on an already clouded day. It's gone in the same moment that she sees it, and though she can see that her own features have remained perfectly, carefully neutral, she still feels the tug at her heartstrings at the sight of her dear old friend. But the moment passes and she smiles a sweet, winsome smile, and greets him with her usual warmth, "Parker."

"M'lady," he answers, and his fingertips go to his brow, doffing a cap that isn't there. "There'll be an Aston Martin waiting for you h'on the ground in Paris. I'll 'ave you in London for your flight at 'alf past five."

"Splendid," Penelope answers, and turns away from her mirror, still smiling as she faces him directly. "Thank you."

There's a moment's pause. "'Appy Valentine's Day, your ladyship," Parker says, and there's a thinly veiled criticism in his tone. "Who's up and died?"

Penelope's answering laugh is silvery, and only slightly false. "No one," she answers primly, rising from her seat and smoothing her hands over the front of her dress. "It's only that it's Paris. Whenever I find myself in Paris, opinions always seem to play rather sharply over whatever I've chosen to wear. I'm attempting to keep it simple. Classic. Elegant. No room for criticism."

She's turned to face him, but she still sees his gaze flit past her, to the mirror at her back, the bare column of her spine, the slit at the back of her dress. Speaking of criticism, it's not Parker's place to criticize, and both of them know it. Both of them are also acutely aware of just who exactly she'll be meeting in Paris, the birthday/Valentine's day date that will mark a titanic shift in their current reality.

So Parker might not be able to help himself.

The silence stretches out a second or two longer than is strictly comfortable, teasing at awkwardness before Parker finally speaks. "I should 'ate to think if you giving the wrong h'impression, m'lady," he says at last, and his sigh is melancholy, rather than disapproving. "Would hate for someone to get the wrong idea."

Parker's general attitude towards her suitors, few and far between though these have been, has always been one of quietly distant menace. He's never extended beyond his boundaries, never done anything to overtly discourage anyone who might want to take her ladyship to dinner, or out for drinks, or dancing. But he's always held the attitude that anyone who would court her should need to surmount a fairly substantial barrier to entry, and his glowering discouragement is a necessary component of the process.

That won't work anymore. Gordon's known Parker for as long as he's known Penelope, and though the pair of them have always had a moderately tense relationship, there's nothing like actual animosity there. Penelope knows Parker well enough to suspect that there's a sort of backwards affection built into the way he treats Gordon, and that there's a certain respect buried in his attitude. After all, it's very difficult not to like Gordon. And he's always given as good as he gets.

In her bare feet, Penelope is only five feet, three inches tall. In his youth, Parker was a strapping six feet, though he's lost a couple inches since then. Looking at him, Penelope has the realization that he's probably right around Gordon's height, though she's never felt as small next to Parker as she feels next to Gordon. When she reaches up to fondly pat his cheek, she doesn't feel any smaller than she usually does. There's really nothing to be said about the impression she fully intends to make, so she doesn't say anything about that. Instead her voice is light, airily casual as she says, "Do look after Bertie this evening, please, Parker. I do hate to think of him, all alone while I'm off gallivanting about in Paris."

"We'd be 'appy to come along, your ladyship," Parker offers. "We'll wait h'in the car."

Penelope sighs and turns away from her driver, busies herself at the case in the center of the room. She'll need a handbag. Tasteful, understated jewelry. The perfect perfume. A way to explain to her dear old friend that he needn't waste his time trying to discourage her. "Parker, you _hate_ Paris."

"And you _hate_ Valentine's Day, m'lady."

He's not wrong about that. And yet— "I'm not going to Paris for Valentine's Day, Parker," she tells him gently.

This earns a genuine and unadulterated _harrumph_ , as Parker folds his arms across his chest. Penelope opens a drawer and withdraws a gold toned compact, with cloisonné roses enameled delicately on the top and nothing inside but a pair of silvered mirrors. She pops this open and begins a minute examination of her eyebrows, as though to convey just how tedious this conversation is growing. "If you start celebrating _every_ birthday in that family, m'lady—"

This is just willful, wishful ignorance of what's actually going on here, and Penelope won't have it. "Parker. Please, don't be obtuse."

Parker, duly reprimanded, relents with a huff of a sigh and a shake of his head. "But why now, m'lady?" he asks plaintively. "Why _h'encourage_ this sort of thing? Why _him_?"

The note of distaste in his voice actually begins to offend her, and there's the gunfire-crisp crack of her compact, snapping sharply closed. She has to catch herself, right at the edge of a rising tide of temper, and remember that not everyone—not _anyone_ , actually—is privy to the fact that what exists between her and Gordon is active and ongoing, mutual and wholly reciprocated.

Tonight is a foregone conclusion. There's a fiction being played out for everyone else's benefit, a gentle transition from the pair of them separately to the pair of them _together_. Something to mark the change, to make it official. There's been a certain appeal to being surreptitious about it all, and the part of Penelope that lives a secretive double life as IR's London Agent will always find something to enjoy about keeping a secret. But for as much as she's a natural liar, Gordon's her absolute opposite, and it's not hard to tell that he's anxious to be honest about the whole situation. So tonight, for all intents and purposes, wears the guise of a first date. Not even a first date, but a tolerantly offered birthday dinner. Presumably to make Gordon quit asking her. Not that he'd asked her, because she'd asked him. His birthday or Valentine's Day. Paris or Nice. They haven't even spent his birthday in Paris yet, and she's already thinking ahead to next year, and Valentine's Day in Nice.

Why him, indeed.

There are a lot of reasons. But Parker probably won't appreciate most of them. So she invents one, instead.

"Because he asked me," Penelope answers, lying. Or fudging the truth, at least.

 _Had_ he asked? She can't remember. She remembers the sincerity of his confession, how sad and how serious he'd seemed, telling her how he felt and expecting her to turn him down. But her memory of their conversation in the stairwell is warm and fuzzy and all blurred together, a golden haze of soft light and champagne. The parts that stand out are a suite of sensations, his hands on her body, his breath on her skin, the taste of wine in his mouth and hers. Kissing him, and the way he'd drawn a soft sound of longing out of her, involuntary, like a magician pulling silk from between her lips. The unexpected perfection of it all.

And the way it had only escalated from there.

"And because I _do_ like him." This is an understatement, but a calculated one. She allows her to shoulders fall, her expression softening. Her voice gains a slightly wistful and entirely manufactured quality, as she goes on, "And it's not fair not to give him a chance. All this _time_ , Parker. If I let him carry a torch any longer he'll burn to cinders. I can't have that."

Parker frowns at her. "Charity, m'lady?"

Penelope tosses her hair and gives a little shrug of her shoulders. "I prefer to call it kindness, Parker. Whatever else you think of him, you can't deny that he's always been terribly kind to me. It seems only fair to pay it back. It's his birthday, after all."

Parker's not above muttering something to himself about that, but it does seem to settle the matter, as he sighs and cedes the point. "Very well, m'lady. I s'pose it might make him less of a pest in the long term. Could I ask if you might do _me_ a kindness, then?"

Penelope smiles gently. "Whatever you'd like, Parker."

There's the smack of leather-clad knuckles against Parker's palm. He might be joking, trying to lighten the tension. Penelope still winces, just a little bit, at the note of darkness in his voice when he says, "Tell Master Gordon that I'll _h'wallop_ 'im if he does anything _h'untoward_."

She has to force a light laugh at that, and push her way past the twinge of guilt, considering just how _h'untoward_ she hopes things might get. "I've always managed my own walloping when necessary, Parker. And it certainly won't be necessary. I promise, you've nothing to be concerned about."

"Just so, your ladyship." Parker's fingertips go to his non-existent cap again and he bobs a little nod of deference as he moves to take his leave. Penelope turns her attention back to her dresser, but not before her partner makes the comment, "Per'aps a warmer jacket than h'usual, might be appropriate m'lady." A deliberate beat, and then, "Bit nippy in Paris, this time of year."

And her dressing room door closes behind her as Penelope feels the warm flush of blood to her face.


	11. significant other

Paris merits a corner of the commsphere, apparently.

EOS makes a note of the fact that John's dedicated a portion of TB5's processing power to a particular portion of February 14th, to the ongoing weather and traffic conditions in the City of Light, complete with all of Gordon's travel arrangements, neatly displayed next to an approximation of Penelope's itinerary. He's gotten his hands on all sorts of information; exactly what car Penelope has rented, including it's onboard GPS. The dinner reservation she's made at one of the best restaurants in the city. The _penthouse_ reservation she's made at the Four Seasons. Apparently John feels this is a situation worth monitoring.

Admittedly there's not a great deal going on in the world at large, as of 1100H UTC, so it's not like they can't spare the attention. So far it's been an improbably quiet February 14th, all forty-eight hours of it stretched out across every last timezone.

It's a slow enough day that they're playing chess in the gravity ring, waiting for something, somewhere, to go terribly wrong. EOS has a comment to make, and she waits to make it until she's two moves away from having John checked, breaks his concentration with precision and delicacy.

"You've taken quite an interest in Gordon and Penelope," she remarks, just as innocently as possible.

John's fingertips hover over a virtual rook, but at this statement he pauses, looks up at her. He knows her well enough at this point—knows her chess game well enough—to be wary of a distraction, to anticipate a trap. He could still weasel his way out of the scenario she means to snare him in, chesswise. She's fairly sure she's got him cribbed into the larger conversational trap, however, and of course that's the larger victory.

"It's his birthday," John says eventually, slow and cautious and like he can sense that there's something else going unsaid. He knows her well enough by now that he probably can. "Penelope wants to show him a nice time. It would be a shame if things didn't go well."

"Things are going to go _splendidly_ ," EOS informs him, with the delighted confidence of someone who's modeled more variations of the scenario than John could even imagine, even with his little corner of the commsphere and its hyperspecific focus on Valentine's Day in Paris. EOS has an entire partition hidden on of one of TB5's myriad hard drives dedicated to the question of Gordon and Penelope. By _her_ calculations, tonight's outcome is a foregone conclusion.

John had _almost_ picked up his rook again, but this is the sort of comment that forces him to glance up at her, suspiciously. His hand leaves the board entirely as he folds his arms across his chest, leans back to look up at the aperture of her camera, still focused on their game. "Oh?" he prompts.

"Oh yes."

"And what makes you say that?"

"It's statistically probable."

She catches a gleam in his eyes now, the hint of a smile that means he's making fun of her when he repeats, "Oh, _statistically_. There are statistics for this?"

"There are statistics for _everything_ , John," she tells him, aloof and superior. "And _this_ is an especially significant event, the second in a sequence. If you didn't want _me_ to take an interest, you shouldn't have told me about the inciting incident."

The mere mention of the _inciting incident_ is enough to bring a slight flush of colour to John's cheeks, but then, that's just the way John is. An outlier, in at least that one aspect, a deviation from the norm, though he'd take offense if she told him so. Not that it makes any particular difference to EOS one way or the other.

"Yeah. No, I _definitely_ shouldn't have told you about that." He shakes his head and sighs to himself, returns his attention to the board, though EOS is pleased to note that he's redirected his attention the other pieces he has in play, and abandoned the rook that could unravel everything. "Sometimes I wonder why I tell you anything," he mutters to himself, resting a fingertip on the top of the image of his remaining white knight.

"I'm your partner, you tell me _everything_ ," she reminds him primly.

"And you'd _think_ I'd have learned by now, and yet—"

EOS persists, ignoring the sarcasm in her _partner's_ tone. "It's very valuable data. It's given a brilliant clarity to the overall curve. It's enhanced my projections considerably."

"Oh, there's a _curve_ now?"

"Oh, there are _several_."

John moves his knight, unwisely, mostly to get his turn over with and free up his concentration for the developing conversation. " _Projections_ ," he echoes, and this time she can hear the slight ring of disapproval. "Have you been reading sociology textbooks again? I think I've told you to stop treating me and my family like lab rats."

EOS has given up on trying to make John understand that the only way she can correctly apprehend people is by considering them as collections of data. He's no exception, and is instead the best and most meaningful example of what happens when she's allowed, in all her complexity, to form a thorough understanding of a person by empirical analysis of their day-to-day existence. "Would you appreciate the practice if I could tell you just why exactly _you_ care so much about Gordon and Penelope?"

Their chess game is all but forgotten by this point, because EOS hasn't made a move and John's attention hasn't dipped back down to the chessboard. He's giving her a hard, almost stern sort of stare, and she doesn't entirely care for it. "Gordon's my brother," he answers, a little terse. "Penelope's my friend."

EOS helpfully completes the thought for him, "—And you want them to fall in _madly_ in love and then into a meaningful longterm relationship, because you're curious about the impact such a thing would have on International Rescue and your family's life as a whole."

The way John recoils slightly from the suggestion is telling, even if he doesn't realize why he's so taken aback. EOS does, but this is a different data set for another time. "I—maybe? I _honestly_ haven't given it that much thought. I guess that's a possibility? But I don't think anyone could possibly _know_ at this stage of—"

" _I_ can." EOS abandons the chessboard properly, pulls up the data she's collected in its place, all her curves and calculations and projections and if she had a throat she would clear it before beginning an impromptu lecture, "They have engaged in intimate congress. In the time since then, they have spoken to each other as near to daily as their respective schedules permit. They have an established social history as a bedrock for further intimacy, both physical and emotional. _And_ they have advanced their relationship to the point where they intend to make it public to their respective social circles and the world at large, though arguably they've been after _that_ from the beginning. From this evening on, barring an incredibly unlikely interpersonal disaster, the pair of them will be _official_. And the effects will ripple outward from there."

John, rather than being even remotely impressed with all her careful collection of data, waves it away without even giving it a proper look. "This is _exactly_ what I've told you not to do," he tells her sternly. " _We're not lab rats_. We're not experiments for you to run from a distance, we're not collections of _data_. You can't try and model our personal lives. First of all, it doesn't _work_ like that, and second of all, people don't _like it_."

EOS pulls her projections back up, insistent. "The only reason _you_ don't like it is because you're on the wrong side of it," she tells him. "Your family poses a whole host of _fascinating_ psychosocial questions according to the latest literature, not the least of which is the question of why only _one_ of you has managed to establish a longterm relationship with an emotionally significant partner."

"Gordon and Penelope—"

"Are not who I'm talking about," EOS corrects firmly. "I mean you and I."

That shuts him up, has him staring up at her, confused. "You and me," he echoes, baffled.

"We're partners."

"Well, yeah—"

"We have a meaningful relationship that we both intend to continue in the long term."

"I mean, sure—"

"Relationships external to one's familial unit are generally held to be an important component of one's social and emotional well-being."

This might be getting a little personal. "I…I guess?"

"You are the only member of your family who _has_ such a relationship. It's anomalous."

John balks slightly at that. Rather later than she might have otherwise expected, according to the relevant data. She adjusts her values accordingly. " _Hey_."

EOS ignores him and goes on, making her point, "Alan is eighteen. Gordon is twenty-five. Virgil is twenty-six. _You_ are twenty-seven. Scott is _thirty-one_. And yet, despite comparison with relevant global averages, you're the _only_ one of your brothers who has an established relationship with a significant other, even one as _other_ as I am." She pauses, disregards the way he's still staring, and concludes, "Or as significant."

She's gotten his attention. At the end of the day, this is all she ever really wants. The chess game is over. She'd have had him in two moves anyway. It was more of an excuse for a conversation than anything else, though playing games with John will always be something EOS takes an impossible joy from, comparable only to the satisfaction she takes in talking to him, and from understanding him better. She's come to the conclusion, across the course of her existence, that people are complex on a level she can only ever aspire to emulate, and that picking one in particular to attempt to understand as completely as possible will be the work of a lifetime. John's lifetime, in this case.

But this isn't actually what she wants to talk about. EOS changes the subject quickly, insistently repopulates the space between them with all her assembled data, relevant and fascinating as it is. "This is a statistical inevitability." She adds a picture of Gordon and a picture of Penelope and a hastily rendered hologram of a cotton-candy coloured heart, just as a handy visual emphasis. "I have data," she tells him again. "Please look at the data."

John sighs at her, and disregards the data, unless there's data printed on the insides of his eyelids, as he presses his fingertips against his eyes and his fingers at the bridge of his nose, the way he does when he's starting to get a headache. She hadn't meant to give him a headache. "No," he says, eventually, and waves a hand through her projections once again, clearing the display. But his tone is oddly gentle as he goes on, "EOS, I can't do that."

Frequently, John seems to miss the distinction between what he can't do and what he _won't_ do. EOS is reasonably certain this is a case of the latter, and as such she feels entitled to pout about it. "Why not?"

She doesn't expect him to have an answer as readily as he does. "Because it's not fair for _me_ to try and know what's going to happen for them, while _they're_ still waiting for it all to play out. It's not my place."

"They wouldn't have to _know_ you knew," she points out, helpfully. "It's your _job_ to know things."

"Doesn't matter. I still don't think I should." But he smiles at her as he says so, and continues, "And really—if it were a hurricane or a forest fire or anything else, I'd take your projections in a heartbeat—but I'm not sure you can actually _know_ something like this. I think there's more to it than facts and figures. I think maybe it just has to happen however it happens."

"Oh." EOS has data that suggests otherwise. But she's learned that being John's partner occasionally means accommodating the things that John believes, even if these are silly and human and false. "You don't want me to tell you."

He shakes his head again, but there's a note of apology in his tone when he answers, "I think I'd rather just watch it all play out the old-fashioned way."

EOS has a natural animosity towards things done the old-fashioned way.

"Luddite," she teases, and knows with a 93.21% certainty just exactly what his reaction will be.

He reels back in exaggerated mock offense, raises a stern, warning finger sharply at her camera aperture, " _Hey_. Outta line."

She ignores him, gleefully. "At this rate, the next thing I know you'll be breaking out a slide-rule and an abacus."

This gets him to glare at her. "Keep calling me names, and next thing you know I'll be washing your motherboard out with _soap_."

She can tell he's joking because she doesn't actually _have_ a motherboard, and she laughs. "You're welcome to wash whatever you like, I'll still have my data."

Before he can make a comment about that, there's a chime from a nearby display, an alert about an incoming priority call, and that's the end of that. John gets to his feet and EOS obligingly turns the gravity ring off, as he begins to drift towards the commsphere, back to work and reality.

John catches himself, just before he takes the passage upward into the commsphere, and hesitates a moment before addressing her nearest camera aperture, with an expression she reads as faintly anxious, "And, uh—I mean, I don't think you _would_ —but maybe don't…maybe don't mention this to anyone else. I know this is part of how you understand people, and the world, and…uh, well, everything really—but not everybody gets that about you. And it can be a little…" The silence hangs in the air, in between pulses of that chiming alarm, as John hunts for a word that won't offend his partner, "…much. Your data. Sometimes."

"I'm _not_ deleting any of my data." EOS has already added another layer of encryption to the drive where she stores all her projections about Penelope and Gordon. She's packed up, compressed, and is making plans to completely relocate the drives where she stores her data about the _rest_ of the family.

"I'm not asking you to."

"It's very good data."

"Your data always is."

Duly flattered, she makes another projection, "You'll appreciate it one day."

John chuckles, starts to pull himself hand over hand up into the commsphere. "I appreciate it it _now_ , just—in the abstract. I just don't feel like I should be privy to it. I don't think anybody should. _Especially_ not Gordon. He'd take that poorly."

EOS renders a chilly little laugh at that. "I think given the relationship between your brother and I thus far, any indication that I have assembled a quantity of data about the probable arc of his romantic life would be met with mild terror and _offensively_ hostile suspicion." EOS pauses, and adds, "Besides, any awareness on his part of the existence of my projections would _affect_ my projections. We can't have _that_."

"No, of _course_ not. Probably best if you kept it to yourself." John's just blandly humouring her now, as his attention starts to drift, to diminish and divide between the contents of the commsphere, and the needs of the world below. There's a call waiting on the main line, and a handful of lower priority alerts are beginning to appear across the globe around him. He'll want her assistance soon enough, partners as they are.

But in spite of everything, as she joins him in the commsphere, and catches the glance he spares for his own little projection of Paris, counting down the hours until Gordon's flight lands at Le Bourget—she can't help dropping one last little piece of trivia on him. Just so he knows that she's right. When it happens—and it _will_ happen—she wants to be quite sure that the first thing he remembers is just _how_ right she was.

So she drops the comment casually, absentmindedly, as though anything she does is absent of specific, calculated intent. Just before John picks up the waiting distress call, EOS idly remarks, "There's a non-zero chance that they'll have the wedding in Paris. I hope I'm invited. I've never been to Paris."


	12. co-pilot

The pair of them are currently en route to Greenland, to help relocate a climate monitoring station, caught on a dangerously shifting ice shelf after some local seismic activity. It's a remote posting with only two people manning it, and neither of them are in anything like immediate danger, having evacuated their little research pod promptly, as instructed when they'd first called International Rescue for assistance. But an entire year's worth of research is at risk of falling off of Greenland into the sea, and so Virgil and Kayo are on their way out to pick the station up and move it somewhere more stable.

They've been in the air for about an hour, traveling at a leisurely Mach 3, because the situation doesn't actually merit a push to TB2's full speed. Early in the flight they'd gotten the standard briefing from TB5 with regard to their ETA and the situation on the ground. By all accounts this is still pretty far from disastrous; the pair of scientists waiting from them are waiting in a well-insulated pop-up shelter, nervous about the state of their station, but warm and safe, and otherwise patient and hopeful and in good spirits, displaying the typical Nordic resilience in states of crisis.

TB4 is loaded in the cargo bay, just in case the ice shifts again and they need to go fishing in Baffin Bay for a year's worth of climate data. Kayo can pilot both ships at need, is approximately as versatile as Gordon is with either, if technically less experienced—but even from across the cockpit, Virgil can tell that this isn't what's bothering her. He's got some guesses, but nothing he's actually vocalized. Thunderbirds aren't exactly what you could call quiet machines, so it's not exactly like you could hear a pin drop in the silence—but there definitely hasn't been much by way of conversation. It's starting to get awkward.

Kayo sits in Gordon's spot, and looks less comfortable and less naturally at ease than Gordon is, as TB2's usual co-pilot. Virgil hasn't said so, but she's been uncharacteristically fidgety and unsettled for the duration of the flight so far. At one point he'd offered her the flight controls, just to give her something to do, but she'd declined and they'd gone back to sitting in silence. Ironically, it's Gordon who Virgil misses, with Kayo here in his place. The three of them flying together always have plenty to talk about.

The pair of them aren't often alone together. And when they are alone together, it's not usually in this context. It's usually in a very different context. And on the clock, on a mission, with TB2's cockpit audio on an open channel and being recorded as a matter of course—it's not like they can talk about that.

Of course, there's an obvious topic of discussion that Virgil hasn't proposed yet. He's pretty sure it'll break the ice, snap the tension like a rubber band. It's just going to take a slight adjustment of circumstances.

Virgil reaches up and thumbs on a comm button, hails TB5. "Hey, John?"

There's a brief delay and then John's familiar avatar pops up above the central console, as responsive as ever to requests for his attention. "Virgil," he acknowledges. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, we're all good here. But hey, since there's no big rush on this one and we've got time to kill on the flight anyhow, I think I'm gonna run a few quick engine tests. Just wanted to clear that with you, and let you know I'm gonna mute my cockpit audio for a bit, it's probably gonna get loud in here."

"FAB, Thunderbird Two. Let me know when you're done."

"Will do, John. Thanks."

The call drops. Virgil hits the big red button overhead that disables TB2's main comm. Kayo looks at him sharply across the cockpit, arching an eyebrow.

Virgil has absolutely no intention of running anything like an engine test. That'll show up on telemetry later, but he'll deal with that if it becomes a problem, but he's betting it probably won't. It's not like Virgil's any kind of stranger to lying to his brothers, anyway.

Particularly not where Kayo's concerned. This is something he's done mostly to accommodate her particular quirks and foibles, to say nothing of her absolutely staggering level of paranoia, as far as their whole situation is concerned. He just wants her to feel comfortable enough to have a genuine discussion, when he clears his throat and says, "So. Gordon and Penelope, hey?"

With the comms off, the change in her is immediate, like a switch has flipped. She stops fidgeting, pulls her legs up to sit cross-legged in the co-pilot's seat, even as she turns towards him, suddenly lit up with intrigue and interest as she says, "Oh my god, I know."

Gossip about the rest of the family is not the best thing he and Kayo could bond over—but it's effective, and her enthusiasm manifests as a grin he can't help but mirror right back at her. Her eyes flicker upward, just briefly, to the red MUTE light overhead. Vigil doubles checks the comm again just to be safe, then flashes her an unnecessary thumbs up.

"I cannot believe she slept with him," Kayo exclaims. The tip of her ponytai flicks back and forth behind her shoulders as she shakes her head, emphasizing her sheer shock. And then, "I thought it was supposed to be Lady Penelope?"

That seems a little uncharitable, represents a rare but extant streak of meanness in Kayo that almost never has a chance to manifest itself. "To be fair," Virgil starts, because Fairwould probably have been a better middle name for Virgil than Grissom, "you don't know that that happened."

She scoffs lightly at that. "To be fair, I'm pretty sure."

Virgil still prefers to stick to the facts when the facts are available, just for the sake of prudence. "Well, I mean, we know things got pretty hot and heavy between them to begin with. We know they've been keeping in touch ever since whatever it was went down. And we know that she's taking him to Paris for Valentine's Day. Even if they didn't hook up—"

"Which they did," Kayo insists, with no small degree of relish.

"—either way, it clearly wasn't a one-time thing, it was an inciting incident. This is a thing that could get to be like, actually serious. Whatever happened that night is old news, what's happening—" Virgil glances at his forward panel, checking the time and doing some quick mental math "—three hours from now…that's what's wild. Gordon and Penelope. Penelope and Gordon. On a date. In Paris. Like, officially."

Kayo chuckles at that, and unfolds herself from the co-pilot's seat, leans back and puts her feet up on the forward console. Gordon would not get away with this, but Kayo has substantially nicer legs. "Paris," she echoes, with what might almost be a dreamy sigh.

Virgil glances across the cockpit at her, and for a moment he's not entirely sure how to interpret that.

Virgil and Kayo are not a couple.

If he had to approximate a label for their particular arrangement, he'd probably default to "friends with benefits"—mostly because it sounds less harsh than "fuckbuddies", though neither term feels quite correct. They have an arrangement. They've had an arrangement for what's probably over a year now, though by the very nature of the way it started, it's sort of hard to pinpoint a start date.

It's not a relationship—or, rather, it's not a capital-R Relationship, because neither of them wants that—and it's definitely not the sort of thing either of them want to be public about. The secrecy of it all is a built-in component, half the fun and nearly as satisfying as every other aspect. All the clandestine rendezvous and the carefully exchanged nods, the unambiguity of it all. Both of them know what they want from each other, and that's just a level of physical intimacy that just isn't readily or conveniently available, within the structure of their lives.

Whatever Gordon and Penelope are doing seems like it's started in secret, but neither of them seem to want it to remain that way, or they wouldn't be making the grand, obvious gesture of spending Valentine's Day in Paris. Clearly that's meant to mean something.

"I've never been," Virgil says, in lieu of trying to figure out just what exactly might have been coded into what may or may not have been a dreamy sigh. Part of what he likes best about his not-a-Relationship with Kayo is that the terms of it are so clearly defined. He doesn't have to guess at what she might have meant. If she meant something, she'll tell him.

She goes on, sounds more prosaic now, as she remarks, "It's a beautiful city. It'll be totally lost on Gordon, I'm pretty sure, but it's a beautiful city."

"Well, if he's there with Lady P, then yeah. No, he's not gonna notice, probably he couldn't give a flying fuck, so long as she's there."

For his part, Virgil's privately thrilled for his little brother. The rest of the family's opinions seem to run the usual gamut: mild, slightly impatient derision from Scott; John's typical faint bafflement when it comes to affairs of the heart, and Alan's complete and absolute indifference. Their grandmother might be the only person who's just as happy about the whole situation as Virgil is, though she's been far more vocal about it. Virgil's kept his own positivity a little more low-key, but he might be the only member of the family who knows just exactly how much this actually means to Gordon—just how long his brother's wanted this and how badly he's wanted it. He doesn't have the heart to be anything but hopeful, for Gordon's sake.

Kayo clears her throat, seems to hesitate for a moment before she goes on to make an offhanded comment, "You would like it. I mean, you'd appreciate it. There's a cynical part of me that always thinks that places like that—what do they call it, the City of Light? Or the Windy City or the Big Apple—any place that gets a nickname. I never think they'll live up to the hype." There's an endearing little shrug of her shoulders as she shakes her head again, sheepish. "I'm pretty much always wrong."

"I'll have to find a reason to go." He pauses, and then asks, "When were you in Paris?"

This is the sort of thing that they don't know about each other. This is the sort of conversation other people probably use to fill up awkward silences. Kayo's nonchalant as she explains, "Exchange semester during college, with some ops training on the side. My dad knows some people in French intelligence, he thought I might like the flavour of some of their fieldwork. Just to help round out my training."

"Oh. Got it."

He hasn't, actually. He hasn't got it even a little bit. Kayo and her father have been adjacent to Virgil's family more or less since childhood—functionally she's always been there. He's known her since he was twelve. She'd never known his mother, and he'd never known hers, and the commonality of their childhoods was that they both had widowed fathers. But for as long as they've known each other, it's strange how much there still is to learn. Sometimes Kayo keeps secrets as a matter of necessity—the truth of who her uncle is was something that had rattled IR to its very foundations—but sometimes Virgil wonders if Kayo might not keep secrets because they're just a fundamental part of who she is.

If he had to mark the onset of when he and Kayo got together, he would probably mark it down somewhere in the aftermath of the reveal of her one great big secret. If he were to wonder about these sorts of things, he might wonder if maybe she'd only gotten involved with him because'd needed to fill the void where that first secret used to be. If it could just as easily have been Scott she'd gone to, or Gordon.

It's a good thing they're not in a relationship, or he'd just have way too damn much to think about all the time.

Before he can get lost in all the things he doesn't have to think about, Kayo changes the subject, kicks them back on track. "I don't think I did any of the things that Gordon and Penelope are probably going to get up to," she comments archly, obviously intending to draw him back into a conversation. "I never booked the penthouse at the Four Seasons, for example."

"Penelope did? How do you know that?"

"John's been doing the Big Brother thing again. Like, the slightly dystopian why-did-we-trust-him-with-a-space-station thing. You know? He mentioned he was keeping an eye on Paris, I asked what he meant by that. He said it's just force of habit, he just wanted to know where he'd be able to reach the pair of them if he needed to."

It's times like these that Virgil remembers that Kayo's paranoia isn't entirely misplaced. "Well. I'm sure he doesn't care about any of the gooey details."

"The gooey details are the best part. How do you think she is in bed? I always had her figured as a bit of a prude. Apparently not."

There's a point past which Virgil isn't willing to speculate, mostly out of loyalty to his little brother. Partially out of respect for Penelope. But it's hard to talk to Kayo about anything that isn't other people, so he decides to split the difference, glancing over to her again for a moment of sincerity. "You know he's really in love with her, right? That this is probably gonna be one of the best nights of his life?"

Kayo shifts where she's sitting, and her boots up on the console switch places, her left heel settling in the crook of her right ankle as she adjusts. "I mean, sure, he's always—"

Virgil cuts her off, before she can be dismissive of what he's trying to tell her, "No, I mean really. I mean, this is—Gordon didn't think this was gonna happen. This was not a projected outcome. He came up to me after the party last night with a bottle of Fireball, and told me what he wanted to tell her. And then he told me he'd probably be back in about twenty minutes, and would I mind being the adult supervision while he got well and properly blitzed."

She winces at that, a rare show of sympathy. "What did you think when he didn't come back?"

He can't actually remember. He remembers playing cards with Kayo and Parker, and that things had gotten a little ribald around the table. He remembers glancing back towards the bar where a bottle of Fireball stood sentinel—less two shots taken for luck— had remained otherwise untouched, when he'd finally decided to head up to bed. And he hadn't actually given Gordon a second thought, hadn't even expected that the midnight knock on his door would be his little brother. He knows the rhythm of Kayo's knuckles on his bedroom door too well to have been surprised by her late-night arrival.

Virgil shrugs, a little guiltily now. There's a rumble of turbulence beneath him and his hands automatically steady on the controls, as the autopilot shudders slightly and then reverts to his control. Kayo takes her feet off the console. The skies are getting a little rough as they skirt the edge of the Bering Sea below. It gives him a few minutes to think about his answer, at least. "I didn't, I guess. I don't know, maybe I figured she'd just let him down gently enough that his heart didn't actually break. I didn't even consider the other thing. That they might actually get together."

"Penelope and Gordon," Kayo repeats, and then again for emphasis, "Gordon and Penelope."

There's an unexpected tug on his heartstrings at that, something that brings a smile to his face and a funny warm feeling to his chest. "Gordon and Penny," he corrects, idly. "He already calls her Penny whenever he talks about her, he's just never worked up the nerve to say it to her face."

This time, Kayo catches his grin, and mirrors it back to him. "Well, I bet he does now."

"Well, why shouldn't he?" Virgil counters.

"Touché. I have to admit, it's got a ring to it. Penny and Gordon. Penny and Gordon and Valentine's Day and Paris. As far as first dates with the love of his life go, it sounds like he pretty much won the lottery."

Virgil chuckles, but fondly. Say what one will about Gordon—and there's certainly plenty to be said—he's always been uniquely suited to being in love. It's a funny thing to have a knack for, but perhaps it's a natural consequence of being born on Valentine's Day. "I hope it all goes well," he says, and means it. "They deserve it."

"Yeah," she agrees, after a moment's pause, and he immediately adds the slightly wistful note in her voice to the list of things he's not required to think about. "I guess they do."

Beneath his hands, the turbulence shuddering through TB2 starts to subside, and the flight evens out again. His hands remain on the controls, for want of something to do with them. Idly he starts to check over their telemetry, and then reaches up to disengage the hardware mute on the main comm. Before he can hit the switch, Kayo clears her throat, coughs in a significant sort of fashion. "What's our ETA?" she asks, suddenly brusque.

Virgil's hand drops from the comm and he glances at his main display again. "Still about an hour and change," he answers, equally businesslike, presuming that this is an indication that Kayo wants to get back to work.

"Do we need to check in with TB5?"

"Probably not, last I knew Scott was supposed to be heading for South America somewhere, some sort of climbing accident in the Andes. You know how Scotty and mountain ranges don't mix. John's probably got his hands full with that."

"Right." Kayo gets up from the co pilot's seat, standing and stretching and then putting one foot up on the aftward section of the cockpit, pausing in the act of climbing up and heading back.

Virgil expects she's going to go double check the gear in the cargo bay, going to use their remaining hour responsibly, the way Gordon would, to start getting ready for the mission that waits for them on the ground. He's about to tell her to have an extra close look at the hydraulics in his exosuit, as these have been known to gum up occasionally in colder climates. But instead he looks up, and catches her slowly undoing the zipper that runs from her throat, down over the ridge of her collarbone, plummeting between her breasts. But it's the green-gold glint in her eyes that keeps his attention as she asks, soft enough that the comms probably wouldn't catch it, even if the red light weren't still on overhead—

"Wanna go fool around?"

And Virgil's already setting the autopilot.


	13. valentine

Scott drops him off in Sydney at around 4AM.

Gordon's birthday and all associated special treatment ended sharply at midnight, and so this particular favour from Scott is very much a favour from Scott, and Gordon expects he'll be paying it back sooner than later. Doesn't really matter. He's already pretty sure it'll be worth it, even if Scott was unnecessarily snarky on the flight out, and made one or two choice comments, the sort that stick uncomfortably in Gordon's memory, before letting him off to catch his red-eye flight.

Fireflash travels at Mach 5, at 75,000 feet, and can get from Sydney to London in just under three hours. Getting a seat is easy, but perhaps that's only true when one is a member of International Rescue, and therefore one sixth of the reason that Fireflash still exists at all.

Flying commercial is weird, and flying commercial in a westerly direction is especially weird, because the planet grows dark beneath him as he leaves morning behind, heads backward across timezone after timezone, back into the fourteenth of February, towards Valentine's Day in Paris.

Sitting in the first class cabin aboard what's already one of the most expensive commercial flights available, and being offered a drink (which he accepts, in the form of a Dark and Stormy, to steady the nerves he doesn't want to admit he has) and a hot towel (which he also accepts, but doesn't entirely know what he's supposed to do with), and then before he's even fully settled in his seat, it seems like they're landing at Heathrow. He hadn't managed to get through even half of the fidgeting he'd had planned.

Off the plane and through the airport to a private runway, and Tracy-One is a welcome and nostalgic sight, has Gordon wondering if he can even remember the last time he took his family's private jet to go anywhere. He jogs up a set of lighted steps with his overnight bag slung over his shoulder, and is greeted with a bemusing level of deference by a Tracy Industries pilot, who seems to think Gordon is kidding when he asks if he can fly the rest of the way, before he catches himself and remembers he's been drinking.

Instead he's ushered into the passenger cabin, and drops himself into another plush, cushy seat to await takeoff. If Fireflash is considered the height of luxury, then it says something about their family in particular that Tracy-One blows it out of the water. Or the air, as the case may be. It's a slower flight, but somehow far less stressful.

Gordon's used to flying all over the world, at all hours of the day, such that the hours of the day cease to have any real meaning. He'll go from morning to night at Mach 6, and all that'll matter when his feet hit the ground is that someone needs his help. What day it is when he gets there isn't usually as important as when he gets there. Dates and times only become important when they fail, when they're too late, when the someone who needed them ends up needing a death certificate. Gordon doesn't keep track of those kinds of things—that's John's job. John knows where everybody is and when. Gordon occasionally has a hard time keeping track of whether he's coming or going. It's probably for the best that he didn't make his own travel arrangements.

Because this sort of thing is John's job, Tracy-One touches down on a private runway north of Paris at precisely 7:28 PM local time, and his older brother's familiar, ghostly blue figure appears from an embedded comm at Gordon's elbow, just as the landing gear bounces against the tarmac.

"Evening," is John's initial greeting, offhanded and taciturn, even as Gordon turns away from peering out the window, automatically straightening his tie. He'd gotten changed over the English Channel, spent a few extra minutes in the bathroom fussing with his hair, and more than a few extra minutes tying and retying his passable half-windsor, until the pilot had announced their approach. "Good flights?"

Gordon nods and tugs at his tie again, like it's the reason he's feeling a little tight around the throat. He peers out the window again, but the sun sets early at this time of year and in this part of the world, and all he can see is the lights of the runway passing beneath. "Yeah, uh huh. You, uh, you just checking in?"

"More or less. I had a few spare minutes between global catastrophes. Thought I'd say hi."

John's tone is casual and he's probably not being literal, exactly, but Gordon's been off the roster for over twenty-four hours at this point, and his brothers have been picking up his slack. He winces at the way guilt creeps up his spine.

He knows that Scott dropped him off on the way out to a developing situation in South America, and the last he'd heard, Virgil and Kayo were just landing in Greenland. John's probably keeping a keener eye than usual on the world below, not that this is ever anything less than razor sharp, but he's probably trying to anticipate problems well before they have the chance to start, so they have the best chance of managing them while undermanned. Gordon's pretty sure his brother looks tired.

But even the politest and most well-intended queries about John's sleep schedule are always answered rather waspishly, even if he has gotten enough sleep. So Gordon knows better than to mention anything, though he does make a careful inquiry as to the state of things in his absence. "You guys holding the fort without me? Earth still spinning? How's it all look from up there?"

"We're muddling through." This is stated dryly, with the sort of arid disinterest that marks a topic that John isn't inclined towards discussing further. "I mostly called because I saw T-One had landed, and I wanted to make sure you hadn't strangled yourself with your necktie in the rush to disembark. I feel like I might have gotten blamed for that."

Gordon grins and adjusts his tie again. He still doesn't like it, but he's getting used to it, and despite his reticence, he has to admit it does make him look like a real, actual adult. It probably makes him look like one, too. "Oh, you know. I muddled through."

"Yes, I can see that. Good job."

A moderately awkward silence follows, during which Gordon starts to wonder just what exactly his brother wants, because casual interest in this sort of situation isn't really something he would've expected from John. There's a jolt as the plane comes to a halt at a small terminal, and when Gordon glances out the window again, his heart gives a similar little lurch at the sight of a gloriously familiar figure, leaning against the hood of a tiny, jewel-toned little sports car, waiting for him on the runway. And suddenly any nervousness he might have felt about the formality of the setting evaporates. Any guilt he might have had about the fact that he's bowed out of saving the world for going on thirty-six hours now—gone. There's just her.

It's nearly a month since he's seen Penelope, and he hadn't realized just what it would feel like to see her again, now that he's also allowed—encouraged, even—to hold her and kiss her and touch her face and smell her hair and have the whole entire experience from the beginning in a whole new context. It's Valentine's Day in Paris and he's twenty-five years old and deeply, abidingly, madly in love with the woman waiting for him on the runway, such that even just the silhouette of her is enough to set his heart thundering the way nothing else in the world ever has.

And even with the whole wide world waiting to supply him with an endless parade of disasters, whatever John might want suddenly can't be of even the remotest importance. Gordon barely remembers John's there, as he bounds up out of his seat and grabs the bag he'd tossed on another of the seats in the passenger cabin. "Nice of you to check in, Jaybird, but I gotta bail," he announces briskly, turning on the heel of a patent leather shoe for the front of the plane, the cabin door and the set of stairs down to the tarmac. "You might remember, I've kinda got a date."

"Right. No, yeah, right. But about that, though—"

Whatever John might have to say about that, Gordon's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear it. "Bye, Johnny! Talk to you later! Thanks for everything! Don't call again!"

"Gordon, wait. Umm—"

It's the umm that snags Gordon in the act of deplaning, rather than the wait. John's always telling him wait, or "stop" or "hold on a second" or "just let me run a seismic scan so you don't get crushed in a rockslide" and all manner of time-wasting nonsense. But John never says "umm", never seems to need those miscellaneous filler words that other people use to buffer their way through the thrust of a conversation. The umm catches Gordon by the collar and spins him right back around, to face the half-sized blue ghost of his brother. John looks, bizarrely, almost a little sheepish. "What? What, wait?"

John clears his throat and for absolutely no reason Gordon can discern, he's pretty sure his brother's a little bit embarrassed. It takes him another precious moment, but John finally gets to the point.

"Just—well, just have a good night, I guess. Happy Valentine's Day, and everything. I hope it all goes well. With you and her."

This sounds enough like sentimentality that it gets Gordon to drop back into his seat for a moment, caught off-guard. Penelope's waiting, and being within an easily achievable distance of her makes every passing second a whole new kind of agony—but Gordon and John have never been what you could call close. There are four and a half years and Virgil between them, and they occupy opposite ends of almost every spectrum they could be compared across. Gordon's not sure he can remember the last time John took an active interest in his personal life, and he's not entirely sure how to process the situation.

"Thanks," he starts, because obviously that's the right thing to say. And then, though it may be the wrong thing, but Gordon can't quite help himself, "…can I ask why you care, though?"

John pauses, slightly abashed. "Is it weird that I do?"

"I mean, it's weird that you do. This, uh. This isn't really the kind of thing I thought you ever cared about."

"This isn't really the kind of thing that's ever happened in our family."

Gordon hadn't thought of it like that.

Scott's the one who usually sets precedents, but even Scott's never been herebefore, as far as Gordon knows. Never been about to walk down the steps of their family's private plane to greet the woman he hopes is the last person he'll ever fall in love with. He doesn't know much about his eldest brother's love life—about any of his brother's love lives, really. Between the three of them, even if John doesn't technically count—there's just not a hell of a lot to know. It hadn't occurred to him that he's standing on the brink of uncharted territory.

He muscles past that thought, and cracks a grin at his big brother, who looks suddenly about as anxious as Gordon should probably feel himself. That's probably fair. John's never liked things he doesn't understand. And for everything he knows, he can't possibly apprehend just what Gordon's about to walk into. "Well, hey. Wish me luck, then?"

"Said you didn't need it, before."

"Different time," Gordon tells him, with all the sagacity of a quarter century's worth of life. Which isn't really very much at all, actually, but he can pretend. "Different place. I'm older and wiser now."

John shakes his head at that, but Gordon catches the hint of a smile. "Well, older, anyway. But good luck."

"Thanks. And seriously, don't call me again."

"I'll try. See you around, Gordon."

"Try and get some sleep sometime, Jaybird," Gordon answers, and then drops the call before John has the chance to get bitchy about that.

And then there's no reason to linger aboard Tracy-One any longer.

Gordon's not sure when he officially became a native of the subtropics, but it's all he can do to keep his teeth from chattering as he pushes open the cabin door, and then jogs down the stairs that unfold down to the runway. He should've thought to ask John about the weather. He has a vague recollection of the pilot making some announcement that might have had something to do with the temperature outside, but he hadn't been paying attention.

It's cold in Paris. But he gets a little thrill of warmth at the sight of her, once again, and that's enough.

She's just right there. She hasn't moved, waiting, she's still leaning up against the hood of a little red sports car. Gordon's never really known from cars, that's always been more like Scott's thing. Or Alan's. This one is a dark, jewel-toned red, and exists in perfect contrast to the inky black jacket she's wrapped herself up in, snug against the February chill.

And as she watches him come down the steps, doesn't stir herself to cross the tarmac to greet him. He wasn't sure if he'd imagined that she'd come running into his arms, exactly, but even if he had, she definitely doesn't do that. He's right at the edge of her personal bubble, almost close enough to touch her, before she pushes herself off the hood of the car, straightening up and taking one single step forward.

She's worn heels tonight, her usual four or five inch platforms, and they make her legs long enough that this single step is enough to close the distance between them. Penelope's tall enough that he's only got a couple inches on her, though she still has to lift her chin slightly to meet his eyes, as her hands go immediately past the open front of his jacket, to rest lightly, comfortably at his waist. She still needs to stretch up, just the tiniest bit, onto her toes in order to kiss him. He's holding her before he even realizes it, the cashmere of her coat rich and soft against the palms of his hands, and somehow her body feels so warm against his that Paris suddenly seems absolutely balmy.

It would be fair to say that Gordon's kissed a lot of people. He could probably number them in the dozens, though he'd be lucky if he could name half of them. It would be reasonable to say that he's gotten good at it, with a full decade of experience in between now and the first kiss he'd ever had; an awkward, fumbling experience with someone forgettable, behind the bleachers out by the football field, at his dustbowl of a Kansas high school.

This is better than that. This is better than any of the hundreds of kisses that must have come before it, from dozens of people, half of whom he doesn't remember. This is better by a country mile, and it doesn't even matter what country. Even if it's France and the country mile should probably be rendered in metric. Gordon's usually pretty good at doing the math in his head, but with her lips on his, he's not sure what that would even be in kilometers. It hasn't even been a month since the last time he'd seen her—the last time he'd kissed her—and yet somehow it's like kissing her for the first time all over again.

Gordon's kissed enough people to know that first kisses are just a means to an end, that is, the means to enable further kisses. He's kissed enough people to know that she probably only meant to kiss him hello, but then he brought his A-game, and there's that slight, almost faltering gasp as she draws back for a moment to get her breath back. The hands that had been light and loose around his waist come up, her fingers twisting in his tie as her other hand finds the back of his neck, and this second time is better than the first, not that he would've believed that possible. He wonders if that's always going to be the case, if kissing her is always going to be an experience that iterates gloriously upward.

There's a click of her heels on the tarmac as she drops down from the tips of her toes, and her hands fall from his shoulders to smooth down the lapels of his jacket, as she takes a half step back for a proper, critical look at him. Her eyes narrow slightly, appraising, and she fiddles with one of the mother-of-pearl buttons of his waist coat, before redirecting her attention to the scarf, still his favourite part of the whole ensemble. She straightens this, so it hangs a little more evenly, and then seems to notice his tie.

Gordon had, briefly, entertained delusions of saying something clever and funny and charming to greet her. Now, he considers himself lucky to still be breathing, and furthermore, lucky that John had talked him into learning a to tie passable Half-Windsor instead of just wearing a clip-on, because having his tie come away in Penny's hand would've been just about the most mortifying thing he could imagine. He's going to need to get used to her tendency to grab at his collar. He remembers that from last time.

But before he can summon up his voice, for Happy Valentine's Day or Hey there, gorgeous or even just the bare minimum mundanity of Hello, Penny—she frowns at him.

—or not at him, exactly, but definitely at his tie, in its carefully knotted half-Windsor. She takes that half step into his personal bubble, again, and this time she doesn't need to stretch herself upward, because she's not the least bit interested in kissing him, this time around, and has instead gone straight for his throat. Her fingers quick and nimble, and its with an unexpected expertise that she loosens the knot about his throat, and then briskly dismantles the knot that took him half an hour to learn and five minutes to tie.

Before he can so much as protest, she undoes the top button of his silk shirt, and then the next thing he feels is light pressure across the back of his neck, as Penelope pulls his tie straight off, deft and deliberate, with the faint whisper of satin over silk. She folds this neatly, and then tucks it in his breast pocket in lieu of a pocket square. Her hand pats his chest lightly, two gentle taps, as she nods to herself and pronounces, "Better."

Then, in a manner as wicked as the black she's wearing, she presses a third kiss lightly against the newly exposed skin at the hollow of his throat.

Gordon briefly undergoes a catastrophic failure of his skeletal system, right around the region of his knees. These seem to have gone all watery and useless. This also seems seems like a fairly natural reaction to being abruptly, brusquely undressed by the love of his life, even if it was only a single, innocuous article of clothing, on an airport tarmac, in temperatures barely above freezing.

And so the first thing he says to her, as her hands find their way to his hips again, is nothing clever or funny or charming. He has to swallow, hard, before his voice comes back. And then he jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the private plane behind him, and tells her, "You know, I bet if I gave the pilot fifty bucks, he would fuck right off for a cup of coffee, and we'd have a whole plane to ourselves for, like, at least twenty minutes."

He feels like the luckiest person in the world when she laughs at that, and luckier still when she reaches up to pat his cheek, consoling. "That sounds almost as lovely as what I've already got planned," she answers. "But I'm sure you remember—Valentine's Day is mine. And I've been waiting for such a long time."

Well. He certainly can't have that. He catches her hand before she takes it away, and presses a kiss into the palm of her hand. "I'm all yours, Pen. Happy Valentine's Day."

She smiles at that, and there's a soft jingle as she dips a hand into the pocket of her jacket, pulls out the keys that go with her little red car. "Thank you, darling. Would you like to drive, or shall I?"


	14. paramour

It's the perfect dress.

She'd doubted it, briefly, just before she'd left. She'd stood in her dressing room one last time, in stark, celestial black, surrounded by all her ivory and silver and crystal, and she'd felt—well. Parker had gone and made a comment, and if _Parker's_ been moved to make a comment, then Penelope knows better than to disregard it.

 _Nippy_ in Paris. Right.

She'd obviously needed a second opinion, but hadn't known who to ask. Penelope has plenty of girlfriends, but the problem with every last one of them would've been their insistence on knowing just what occasion demanded the dress she'd chosen. And given the nature of Penelope's friendships, it's possible that this information, if disclosed, would have gone shooting through the grapevine like _heroin_ , and straight into the veins of a celebrity-addicted press. After tonight, after their secret ceases to be a secret any longer— _then_ Penelope will deal with the onslaught of attention that results any time there's a heart-shaped blip on her radar. But for their first official night together, she'd been determined to keep Gordon to herself for just a little longer.

So, with secrecy in mind, she'd called Kayo.

She'd caught her in the air en route to a mission in Greenland, backing Virgil up in Thunderbird 2. If Penelope had been paying a little more attention, she might have noticed the way her counterpart had seemed startled by the call, momentarily flustered. She might have noticed the sheen of sweat on her throat, the open collar of her flightsuit. But instead she'd just gone straight to the question, stood in front of the secured comm in the parlour with her hands on her hips, and asked, "Is this dress all right?"

Kayo had been momentarily flabbergasted, before offering a hesitant answer, "Y-es? Yeah? Uh. Maybe a little plain, I guess? Did you call my priority line to ask me about your _dress_?"

Penelope had ignored the note of incredulity. "Well, I leave for Heathrow in an hour, and if this dress is _not_ all right, then I've put myself squarely in a state of crisis."

"It's _fine_."

"You haven't seen it properly yet." And she'd taken another step back from the comm and turned her back towards it, stood at a practiced contrapposto, with one hand still coquettishly on her hip, as she'd reached out and retrieved her compact from where it lay on a side table. She'd flicked it open and joined the existing channel to get a proper look at Kayo's reaction. Caught a glimpse of wide eyes and a moment of disbelief that seemed as much of an answer as anything else, and sighed to herself. "Parker suggested it might be too much."

" _Uh_. Well, it looks like the entire _back_ of it's fallen right off. Are you sure he didn't say it might be too little? It… _well_." Kayo had paused, then, fumbling slightly for the right answer, "…it creates a…a certain impression."

"I usually intend to create an impression."

"It creates a very _specific_ impression."

This isn't the kind of question Penelope had ever asked Kayo before, and in second-guessing her dress, she'd found herself second-guessing the choice to ask Kayo in the first place. They've never had this kind of relationship. A friendship, certainly, of a kind. After a fashion. Cordial, the way colleagues are, the pair of them both adjacent to an extraordinary family, and therefore friends by proxy. Penelope likes Kayo, respects her tremendously. Enoys working with her. Values her opinion. Not usually about fashion, that much is true, but beggars can't be choosers. But she'd asked this question not actually hoping for Kayo's opinion, per se, so much as a small measure of affirmation and encouragement, for some sort of sideways reassurance about the looming exposure of her latest secret. The sort of thing one goes to a friend for. She'd been pretty sure this was present in the subtext.

Apparently not.

But to her credit, Kayo had seemed to sense that she'd said the wrong thing. There'd been an awkward pause on the line between them, both awkwardly considering the intent in the impression created by her _very_ backless black dress, and Kayo had cleared her throat, awkwardly. "…But you shouldn't care what _I_ think. Let me, uh. Let me see if I can get you a more insightful second opinion."

There'd been a few moments of silence. Penelope had started to conclude that Kayo was helpfully patching in Grandma Tracy. And then—

"Afternoon, Lady P. Kayo said something about your dress?"

In an act of absolutely staggering betrayal, the next voice Penelope had heard was Virgil's. At the unexpected sight of her paramour's elder brother, she'd just about dropped her compact in her haste to turn around, to assume a slightly less risque sort of posture, and to quickly and deliberately fold her arms across her chest: an action that she'd hoped wasn't as _entirely_ obvious as the hastily concealed shape of her breasts through the front of her supposed-to-be-perfect dress. She'd managed not to turn _completely_ crimson, but it had been a near thing, and she had felt warmth creeping up her neck, flushing to her cheeks. On auto-pilot, she'd managed a polite, "Good afternoon. Ah…and, yes. I just—I wasn't quite…sure…"

"You gonna let me see?"

Penelope had shrugged, her arms still tight across her chest, and glanced downward. "This is it."

Virgil had given her a quick glance up and down, before inquiring, "Has someone up and died?"

"That's what Parker said. Black is elegant."

"Got me there. Still, bit plain for _you_ , though, isn't it? Never really known you to dress down, Penelope."

She'd shrugged again, and her arms across her chest had relaxed slightly. Genuine insight had left her a little less defensive. The way he'd dropped her title had reminded her that Virgil is a friend. "For Paris, I do. French fashion magazines are not naturally inclined towards kindness and I prefer not to give them much latitude for criticism."

"Bastards. Don't tell Gordon that, or some poor Parisian fashion blogger is gonna end up bringing their teeth home in a jam jar."

That had made her laugh. "I might not entirely object to that. The last time I drew any kind of attention to myself in Paris, I wore something pink and ruffled, and some hideous cretin noted that I'd dressed as though I hoped to be mistaken for a _patisserie_."

She hadn't known offhand if any of the five of them spoke French, but Virgil had still chuckled at that. "Right. Yeah, keep that one to yourself. You need to understand, I'm _really_ not kidding about the jam jar."

Penelope had gestured down the length of her simple black dress. "Hence the little black dress."

"Well, then lemme get a proper look then and see if I can come up with anything awful off the top of my head. If not, you're probably safe. Let's see a little turn on the catwalk, your Ladyship."

There'd been nothing for it, then. And she hadn't even really minded, it had somehow been less awkward to talk to Virgil than it had been to try to talk to Kayo. She hadn't even minded the way Virgil had whistled, low and appreciative, when she'd shyly turned her back on the camera.

When she'd turned back around, Virgil had just been grinning, in a way that had reminded her suddenly, intensely of his younger brother. He'd shaken his head and heaved a theatrical sigh. "You know we're gonna need him _back_ , right?"

Penelope had offered back a small, subtle smile of her own. "You can have him when I'm done with him."

"You look great."

"Thank you. That's really all I wanted to hear."

She'd gotten a little mock salute and another grin in answer. "Any time, Penelope. Have a good night. Go easy on my kid brother, okay?"

Penelope hadn't been able to promise that, and had signed off the call with a wink and a wave, feeling much better about her choice of attire, her perfect dress.

The payoff is delayed, but worth it.

Gordon helps her out of her jacket at the restaurant—because Grandma Tracy raised her boys _right_ —and there's an actual, audible _gasp_ from behind her as it slides off her shoulders, revealing the bare skin of her back. It's a gentleman's gesture. It's only polite, helping a lady with her coat. But the pace of the action immediately slows, becomes eager and reverent all at once. It's as though she's a birthday gift that needs careful unwrapping, as though this is a moment that needs to be savoured.

And perhaps both those things are true, and it's one of the things she enjoys most about Gordon; how genuine his reactions are, how sincere and unguarded. Her hands come free of her heavy black coat, wrists slipping out of the sleeves, but she doesn't turn towards him. Instead she just slowly rolls her shoulders, as though it's good to finally be unburdened of the weight of her jacket, and then lifts a hand to pull her hair across the back of her neck, such that it cascades in a loose tumble over her shoulder.

Still, for all her teasing, she's somehow not prepared for the lightness with which the tip of his finger lands atop her first vertebrae, or the way his touch draws down along her skin, plummeting slowly down to the sweetheart point at the base of her spine. Drawing a delicious shiver down the whole length of her back. His hand lingers at the small of her back as she turns around, just to bask in the way he looks at her. She realizes that he'd probably be looking at her this way no matter what she'd worn, but in this dress she gets to feel his hand against her bare skin, and it's just a reminder of the way she's found herself craving the very particular way Gordon touches her, careful and confident all at once. And the way he looks at her like he never wants to look away.

"You're _beautiful_ , Pen," he tells her, earnest and emphatic, like this is information she desperately needs to know and he's the only person who can possibly tell her. "God, you _really_ are."

Penelope already knows this. She knows it so well she doesn't need to be told, has been secure and certain in the knowledge of her own personal beauty, ever since she was old enough to be aware of it. She'd been a lovely child, and then a pretty girl, and finally a beautiful woman. She's never been anything less than proud of the fact that she's beautiful, because it takes a great deal of work to be beautiful.

There's still something different about it when _he_ says so, though. Because instead of her usual demure nod, when people tell her that she's looking especially lovely, or radiant, or anything else, something about the way Gordon says so makes her feel flushed with genuine pleasure at the compliment, makes her reach out to clasp his hands, with a sincere little squeeze of his fingers. "Thank you, darling."

"Calling it now. You're gonna get _sick_ of me telling you about how beautiful you are."

Penelope beams at him. "I promise I won't."

"No? Because you're goddamn _gorgeous_. And I _know_ you know that. Like, I am the last guy in the world who needs to tell you that, but I can't actually _help it_. You've been beautiful ever since the first day I met you, and I haven't been allowed to tell you before now."

There's nothing she can do about that sort of statement except press a kiss lightly against his cheek in response. "Making up for lost time, then." She smiles up at him. "And I like it when you tell me. You always seem to mean the things you say."

"Why else would I say them?" He squeezes her fingers gently before he lets go, drops his hands to the back of the chair he'd draped her coat over, and pulls it out on her behalf.

"Touché," she answers, as she takes her seat, the first instance of the impeccable French she'll have occasion to use tonight. She still doesn't know if any of the boys actually _speak_ French. But she does know that her own is exquisite to listen to.

He takes the seat across from her, settles in and finally spares a glance at their surroundings.

She's eschewed the five-star restaurant on the ground floor of the five-star hotel she's chosen for tonight, in favour of somewhere smaller, more intimate. Emphatically unpretentious. She'd booked the reservation the very same morning she'd last kissed him goodbye. Paris or Nice. Secretly, she's glad that it's Paris. In Paris she's reliably considered to be a non-entity, unless determined to have committed some sort of cardinal crime against fashion. The Parisian media goes out of their way to ignore her, and putting her name down for a dinner reservation in Paris is therefore not act that risks a leak to a salivating press.

Penelope's especially thankful not to be caught at a restaurant like _this_. If it had its equivalent back in London, she shudders to imagine the way it would look in the tabloids the next day, and not just because she's here with her blond, brown-eyed, baby-faced new suitor, who is recognizable only if you already know _exactly_ who he is. If she'd tried to take him _anywhere_ in London, there would've been an uproar. Here, no one cares.

The restaurant around them is as busy as one might expect, for Valentine's Day, but it feels friendly instead of crowded. Most of the patrons are local, Parisian themselves, and the atmosphere is warm and casual. Gordon looks around with mild interest, and across the room Penelope spots the man who'll likely be their waiter, assembling a tray with menus and water glasses and a tall carafe, now that they've taken their seats. He'll still take his sweet time getting over here, allowing his guests to get properly settled. For the moment, they have plenty of time to settle.

"…So this joint isn't gonna be burgers and fries, is it?" Gordon asks, and as expertly versed as she is in body language, and as closely as she's watching his every move, Penelope can tell he's nervous. Just a little. "There's a lotta forks, that's usually a bad sign. I'm guessing probably no burgers. Almost _definitely_ no fries. That seems ironic, considering it's France. Supposed to be famous for their fries."

She laughs gently and smiles at him, and reaches across the bare wooden tabletop and pats his hand, reassuring. "You'll need to learn to trust me, darling. It's your birthday, I wasn't about to take you anyplace you'd _hate_. You're actually not _that_ far off the mark."

"So…what, _bifteck hache_? _Des pomme de terre frites_?"

Penelope blinks at him, surprised. Secretly slightly delighted, but mostly surprised. " _Est-ce que tu parles français, chéri?_ " she inquires.

He shakes his head, gives her a slightly abashed grin. "No, babe, 'fraid not. I learned just exactly enough French to say 'yes, no, please, thank you, burger and fries' and then one other thing."

"What's the one other thing?"

Now he winks at her, adorably sly, and taps the side of his nose as though it's a great big secret. "I can't actually say it in public."

It takes her a moment (just the barest moment) to discern what he might mean by that. When she does, it's with warmth in her cheeks again and a familar little flutter of her heart. "Oh!"

There's just something about the way he _says_ things. She's noticed it, talking to him almost daily for the past month, as she has, but it's just so much _more_ in person. She'd forgotten how easily he does this to her, because no one else ever has.

The arrival of their waiter saves her from having to come up with some clever rejoinder, to cover for her surprise and intrigue at whatever other phrase he's learned, unfit for public consumption. Instead she greets the waiter in her own carefully practiced, lightly accented French, rapid and fluent and effortless. She makes her way quickly through the usual pleasantries without a word of English, and then reaches across the table to take Gordon's hand again. "Any preference for wine, darling? Red, white?"

"Uh, neither, actually." The waiter hands him a menu and he nods his thanks, but his glance across the table at her is sheepish, and he's apologetic as he says, " _Technically_ I'm back on call. But just to make Scott shut up about the whole thing, and _not_ that anyone's gonna call. Like, I _specifically_ told John not to. But yeah, uh, water's fine."

"For me too, then." Penelope flashes their waiter another smile, and dictates her desire for a bottle of mineral water; sparkling, and a carafe of plain tap water for her companion. She informs him that they'll need a few minutes with the menu, and thanks him for his attention. He bustles off, and she watches Gordon, studying the menu. "Anything catch your eye?"

"Considering that my meaningful command of the language begins and ends with 'potatoes', that's pretty much all I got."

Penelope isn't surprised by this. She'd planned for this. "Well. Considering my _heritage_ , it pleases a smug little British part of me to go to Paris specifically in pursuit of a _Swiss_ delicacy. And considering you're _American_ , I thought we'd keep things simple, and so the meal I had in mind basically consists of half a wheel of cheese, seared tableside, and the melted face of it scraped onto roasted potatoes and assorted cured meats. Pickles and bread on the side. Or, if you'd prefer things simpler still, I'm told they do a lovely fondue. One can hardly go wrong with French bread and French cheese."

Gordon's especially cute when he's skeptical, and the look he gives her from across the table is blatantly doubtful. "Really?" he questions, and then squints at his menu again. "…you sure? Like…so, okay, I haven't been to Paris before—but I've done the haute cuisine thing a few times. I'm _pretty sure_ this whole thing is supposed to be like, nine courses and start with some sort of _gelled_ thing, with tiny spherical mystery bits suspended in it. And then possibly something with foam. And then some sort of trio of something. Salad course consisting of microgreens that need to be eaten with tweezers. Main course; the _concept_ of steak. Dessert, chocolate too dark for light to escape it. And then the world's tiniest cup of coffee. And somehow it all costs _eight hundred dollars_."

She can't help a laugh at that, because he sounds so grumpy as he says it, despite the fact that his family's net worth ranks in the billions. There's a streak of down-to-earth sensibility that runs through his entire family that leaves very little room for expensive frivolity. On occasion they genuinely seem to forget just how much they're actually _worth_. "Dearest, I think this may be the very first time I've heard you be cynical about anything."

Judiciously called out, Gordon just shrugs. "I'm just not very good about fine dining. It's kinda lost on me, and I always feel bad at the end of it. And hungry. Usually still hungry. Because they tried to feed me tweezer salad."

Penelope blinks at him, bemused. "…does this seem like that sort of place?"

Gordon glances at his menu, and for the first time seems to notice that this is just a single card, laminated. He looks around the restaurant, and the patrons they share it with. There are jeans and t-shirts in evidence. People are dining cheerfully, casually. He seems a little embarrassed as he meets her gaze again. "Well. Guess not. It's _Paris_ , though. I guess I thought…"

She lets him trail off, and smiles gently as she says, "I like to hope I know you rather better than that, Gordon. It's your birthday, after all. I wouldn't take you anyplace where you might be miserable."

"I wouldn't be _miserable_ ," he protests immediately, and beneath the table she feels the toe of one of his shoes gently stroke up the side of her calf. "Trust me, Penelope, anyplace _you've_ taken me isn't a place I _could_ be miserable."

He doesn't know how true that actually is, how carefully she's thought about every aspect of tonight. Smiling at him again, she reaches across the table and gently tugs the menu from his hands. "Well, if you'll trust _me_ a little further, I think I know what would make you happy."

" _You_ make me happy."

She blushes at that, pretty and obliging, and wonders if she's ever going to get used to his sincerity, how immediate and automatic it is for him, to just say exactly what he's thinking or feeling at the exact moment that he thinks or feels it. It makes such a change from her own habitually guarded persona. Penelope finds herself wondering how they'll adapt to one another. If she'll ever be able to tell him, just straight out and just as easily, that he makes her happy, too. That sometimes he makes her happier than she'd even realized she could be.

For now, as she lowers her gaze and pretends she needs to read the menu, she just smiles and hopes he can tell just how pleased she is to hear that, and how badly she wants to return the favour. Dinner is just the beginning of what she's got planned for tonight. By the end of it all, she hopes he'll know enough to be sure of just how happy he makes her.


	15. lover

Gordon is as stone-cold sober as he's ever been, and yet he still _feels_ drunk. He feels giddy and disoriented and he's being pulled by the hand through a bright and brilliant world, trailing along after the woman he's in love with as she leads him through the lobby of the most expensive hotel in Paris. He hadn't had a drop of wine with dinner, and neither _apéritif_ nor _digestif_ , though both were offered. He'd declined, and not just because he's technically back on call. The last time he'd really been with her, he'd been in that sort of fuzzy, hazy place in between tipsy and drunk, and after _that_ he'd been hungover. Getting to experience her company in full posession of his faculties is entirely worth the price of abstinence.

Dinner was slow, delicious, luxuriant in its simplicity. Unintimidating. Exactly as Penelope had promised, meat and potatoes, smothered in oozy, molten cheese. He'd been curious to see just how she handled herself, dining on something so robust—but she'd ordered herself a simple salad of fresh, jewel-toned leafy greens, glistening with lemon and oil and dijon, and had only partaken of occasional small bites of their shared main course. The French habitually dine at a later sort of hour, so it had already been past eight when they'd gotten to the restaurant, and pushing ten by the time they got finished. It all fits into the sort of mixed up schedule by which Gordon usually lives his life, but it means that they check into the hotel at eleven at night, and he's still wide awake.

Not, he thinks, joining her in the private elevator up to the penthouse, that sleep seems like it's a high priority for either of them.

As the doors slide softly closed on the lobby of the most opulent hotel in Paris, all he cares about is her, and the little slice of midnight she's worn, just for him. It's the first privacy they've gotten since the drive into the city, and that had been mostly small talk, mostly getting acclimated to each other's respective presence again. It hadn't taken long.

There's something about elevators. Something about hotel elevators, particularly, and Gordon's been in enough of them to know. Something about the limited time. Something about the threat of discovery, though it's unlikely in this particular case, with only one other floor for this elevator to stop at. There's something about the rising sensation of vertigo as the elevator car glides upward in defiance of gravity, and he turns towards her, and the distance between them closes. She moves into his arms like there's nowhere else she could belong.

And for as long as they've waited to be together, and to be _alone_ together, it's still more of a simple embrace than anything else. Her body presses close against his, and it's such a joy just to hold her, especially when she seems to delight in being held. Gordon hasn't asked, but he wonders to himself how long it's been since anyone else was this lucky. It's one of those moments in which he can't believe he's this lucky himself.

The elevator chimes their arrival to the hotel's top floor and the sprawling, elegant penthouse—but he doesn't quite let her go. She smells _amazing_ and _so_ familiar, and just one more deep breath of the scent of her hair seems not only necessary, but _vital_ , like oxygen. He's been absolutely aching to hold her again. It's hard to let her go. He's lucky that she doesn't seem to want him to.

"I've missed you."

Before he can say it, she already has. Just exactly what he's been thinking. Her voice is a soft sigh of longing in his ear as she nuzzles her face against his neck and her embrace tightens. The elevator doors slide open, but neither of them move.

Gordon would've been happy to say it first, because it's just _true_ , but he's gotten the idea about Penelope that it's harder for her to say these sorts of things. Not because she doesn't feel them, but because she isn't practiced at expressing them directly. When she's affectionate or sentimental, it's always in a sideways sort of fashion, some double-meaning or careful subtext. Even after nearly a month of contact with her, he's still learning to tease out the truth of the way she feels, the way she codes it so subtly into her conversations. For her to say it outright—that she's _missed_ him—Gordon knows her well enough by now to know just how much she must mean it.

He loosens his hold just enough to kiss her, in lieu of answering. Her arms around his neck slacken slightly, and her hand slides down his chest to the lapels of his jacket, in absence of his tie, and she kisses him back.

"Missed you, too," he murmurs, when she lets him breathe again.

She's smiling as she pulls away and her hands fall to find his. She pivots on one of those ridiculously high heels, and it takes only the slightest tug on Gordon's fingers before he's following her through the elevator doors and into the hotel suite.

Through the hotel room door, and it's a long, lavish hallway that leads into the suite proper. Pale blond wood underfoot, pale ivory wallpaper, with soft recessed lighting illuminating the whole length of the hallway. She still wears her coat and the midnight black of her ensemble draws a stark contrast to the oppulence around her, all the soft colours and lights, the gleaming mirrored accents. He hesistates in the foyer, uncertain if he should take his shoes off by the door, though by the click of her stilettos on the hardwood, she hasn't done the same. _And_ he's wearing socks with hot pink rubber ducks on them, and while that had seemed like a good idea at the time, suddenly it seems childish.

He follows her further into the suite, into the living room.

And he should be paying attention to his surroundings. He should be appreciating the oppulence of what's probably the single most expensive hotel room in Paris. But instead he's watching Penelope as she shrugs out of her jacket, drops it idly across the back of a low slung setee, and pulls her hands through her hair. He expects her to stop, to sit down, but she doesn't. Before he can cross the room, she turns, smiles at him and beckons, holding out a hand for him to take. He would've gone to her anwyay, but thus summoned, he's across the room in a few quick strides. Gordon takes her hand and wants to take the opportunity to kiss her again, but instead she turns towards the double doors out onto the terrace.

Penelope pushes the door open and a blast of icy February air rushes in. This is sharp and fierce and sudden, such that Gordon gasps and winces and can't help a sudden, bodily shiver. The pathetic little whimper that follows is even less dignified than socks with hot pink rubber ducks on them.

And she just laughs at him, sudden and overjoyed. "Darling!" she exclaims, apparently unfazed by the same blast of icy air. "Oh, Gordon, you poor creature."

"It's _cold_ , Pen," he protests.

"It's invigorating! Come along, pet, after a big meal like that? You'll want some nice fresh air to get the blood up. Come now, darling."

"It's _freezing_."

"A bit nippy," she agrees, but archly, in that voice he's come to recognize as a tell, the sort that tips him off to the presence of one of those subtle double-meanings. And she lets his hand go and slips out through the door, leaves him swearing under his breath before he follows her again.

It's dark out. Late. The Parisian skyline gleams on the horizon, the city stretches out below the balcony. Bemused, he notices the Eiffel Tower and realizes that this is the first time he's deigned to even look for it. But it doesn't hold his attention for more than a moment, because she's gone to the railing of the terrace, eight stories up. The view hasn't gotten her attention any more than it has his, and so he's watching as she fiddles with something built into the wrought iron railing, and a pale blue holographic display suddenly appears before her. Now her fingers are deft and her movements are quick, as she inputs something into the provided display.

Before Gordon can join her at the railing to ask what she's done, the entire world shimmers into a curtain of cascading light around the borders of the balcony. There's a low, warm-toned humming sound, sweet and sustained, and suddenly everything changes. The wind ceases, the air stills. Warmth begins to fill the space, chasing away the cold, radiating up from the tiled floor, blowing gently from vents concealed along the edges of the terrace. After a few moments the humming sound stops and there's a soft, almost crystalline chime. The city around them, the Paris skyline, fades up from darkness into gradual daylight, as time spirals forwards, advancing through the shades of a sunrise on through dawn, past noon, past the brilliance of the sunset, and into the earliest hours of a dusky summer evening.

Penelope hasn't watched this happen, though she's still stood at the edge of the balcony with one hand on the railing. It's possible she's seen it before, because that's the only excuse Gordon can think of, for why she'd be watching _him_ instead of the absolutely ridiculous bit of technological trickery she's just pulled. He's spent enought time around Brains—and knows enough about holographic nanites and the precision of localized climatic controls—to know how this was done. He knows _exactly_ what sort of tech this is, because it's tech they use every day. He's never imagined it being used like _this_. It's properly warm now, the heat trapped by a gossamer mesh of miniscule nanites, projecting a complete hologram of the City of Light, as seen from this exact spot, on a far warmer day. There's no more than a micron's width of substance between him and the February chill. But it feels as warm as a night on the island. And the pale blue light of the summer evening sky mingled with the warm golden glow of the surrounding city is just glorious.

Penelope's still watching him as he manages to tear his gaze away from the falsehood of the Parisian skyline, to look at her, still standing at the railing, silhouetted against it all in inky black. "Is that better, darling?" Penelope asks, though there's a teasing note in her voice. "They don't call it the Four Seasons for nothing."

"You're showing off," he accuses, trying to sound affronted, but he can't help beaming at the fact that she'd do something like this, trying to impress him. "We _could've_ gone somewhere _actually_ warm, you know. I would've gone anywhere. Hell, you could've flown out, and we could've just popped over to Mateo Island, had a picnic. Watched a Thunderbird launch. There are people who _stalk us_ trying to see those, you know. Maybe Scott would've given me a little less hell if I hadn't gone further than our own backyard."

He's only joking, but her smile wavers slightly, flickers into a frown. Her pretty blue eyes narrow. "Did Scott give you hell?"

"Scott's always giving me hell about _something_." Gordon shrugs, and when she gestures towards the little wrought iron bistro table in the center of the terrace, he obligingly seats himself. The chairs are surprisingly comfortable for patio furniture, and he relaxes slightly as she moves across the terrace behind him, towards an outdoor bar, busies herself at the mini fridge. He picks up a matchbook from a little bowl in the middle of the table, and idly starts to light the collection of candles that cluster on a charger plate atop the table. "He also gave me a lift to the airport, so he can't have had _that_ much of a problem with it."

"Mmm."

When she joins him at the table, she's got a bottle of champagne and two glasses in hand. He stops lighting candles as she places these three things on the tabletop, and seats herself opposite him. Her hands smooth her dress over her legs as she sits, though the hemline falls well below her knees and there's nothing like her modesty at stake. She reaches for the champagne bottle, starts to dismantle the whole assembly keeping the bottle stoppered up—foil and wire and a big, broad shouldered cork—and he reaches for the glass she's brought for him, and sets it aside. "On call, remember?" he says gently, though he doubts she's forgotten.

She hasn't. "I know," she says and reaches across the table for the glass he'd taken away. "And I know you told me you wouldn't be going anywhere." It's with a practiced ease that she's stripped the bottle of its golden wrapper, undone the little wire cage. Her wrists twists elegantly around a neck of green glass, with a French-manicured thumb braced over the top of the cork, and there's a pop like a gunshot as it comes free. Gordon's watching and he still jumps, and then he can't quite help being mesmerized by the curl of steam like gunsmoke from the lip of the bottle.

"I still really shouldn't—" he starts, but slowly, and he doesn't stop her. Champagne had been a pretty significant component of the last time they'd been together. It seems right that she's filling their glasses again. He trails off, and lets her interrupt him.

"Just one drink," Penelope says, already filling his glass, though she stops well below the rim. "Half a drink," she amends, making a concession. "Just enough to toast your birthday, darling. It's nearly midnight, after all."

Maybe it is. He hasn't kept track. Just the same way she's stolen the sky overhead and the balmy warmth of a midsummer's evening, he's stolen a whole extra day. He watches pale gold froth into her crystalline glass—though she stops halfway, too. It's obviously too late now. "Thought this was supposed to be your Valentine's day?"

"It's _our_ Valentine's day." The bottle tips back upwards, and she sets it down on the tabletop. "We're _official_ , now."

The way she says it gives him a little electric thrill, and that settles it. "Oh, well, I'll drink to _that_."

Penelope smiles, and somehow, Gordon gets the impression that her smile is going to be the reason he does a lot of things he probably shouldn't. She hands him his glass, then picks up her own, dainty and delicate and just the absolute pinnacle of class, in her perfect black dress with a champagne flute in hand. "Cheers, then," she says softly, and raises her glass. "Happy birthday, Gordon."

"Happy Valentine's Day, Penny."

He drinks, just as she does, and tells himself that half a glass of champagne probably isn't _so_ bad, in the grand scheme of things, even if he's a bit of a lightweight. It's not like anyone else ever has to know, _especially_ since no one's going to call. Gordon's not much of a wine person, but he's pretty sure he could get used to champagne, for as much as it's always going to remind him of her. She closes her eyes as she drinks, and when she puts her glass back down, there's the faintest shimmering print of her lipstick around the rim. She smiles and leans forward over the table, the candlelight playing softly over her perfect, pretty face.

He needs to stop himself from telling her she's beautiful, again.

But that means he's going to need to come up with something else to say, otherwise he's going to lose the rest of the night to staring at her. Even after everything that's brought him to this point—Valentine's Day, in Paris—he can still barely believe he's really here with her; that this has happened, and _is_ happening.

What pops into his head isn't ideal, and probably shouldn't be the first thing he goes with. But it's relevant, and something he's been trying to find a moment to mention. Not that it's been bothering him. Because it hasn't. But if it _were_ , she's gradually becoming the person he wants to talk to about the things that bother him. Not that this has. Because it _hasn't_.

"Wanna hear something funny?" he says, as though telling her this as like it was a joke will make that so. "Something else Scott said."

Her fingers slip daintily between his, clasping his hands. Her sarcasm is perfectly measured, _exquisite_ , as she says, "Oh, I do _so_ love it when Scott feels the need to _say_ something."

Gordon can't help grinning at that, that she'd make him feel better about it before he's even told her what it was. "Right?"

"What was it?"

She's already on his side, and that's the best possible feeling in the whole entire world. Gordon almost feels a little guilty, repeating back what Scott had to say, but in fairness, it concerns her, too. "Well, when he dropped me off in Sydney, he said it was nice of you to humour me, on my birthday."

There's a beat of silence. Her hand leaves his and goes to her wine glass, still half full of the half glass of champagne she'd talked him into. The rest of this vanishes, and the foot of the glass lands on the white tablecloth with perhaps a little less delicacy than should be employed, with stemware. There's a flash of fire in her blue eyes beneath their dark lashes, but her voice is so cold it brings the breeze up with it. "Your brother," she declares, "can be _such_ a prick."

Gordon laughs at that, surprised and secretly a little thrilled at the vehemence in her tone, just how strongly she's taken offense. "Well, yeah. Sometimes. He has his moments. It's okay, though."

She fumes, and he discovers that she's just absolutely _stunning_ when she's angry. "How _dare_ he."

He also discovers that he really, _really_ doesn't like it when she's angry and so this is a state of affairs that needs to be corrected, and _promptly_. He reaches across the table, takes back the hand she'd taken away, cradles her wrist in one hand and covers her fingers with the other. The sleeves of her dress are long, nearly covering her palms, but her fingers are bare, and surprisingly cool against his skin. "Hey," he starts, careful and kind and _not_ minimizing the fact that she's angry, even if she's angry on his behalf, "It doesn't bug _me_ , okay? Scott's always saying some damn thing. I'm used to it. You don't need to be mad, Pen."

She pauses, then, and it's just amazing about her, what fine control she has over her emotions. That the flash of fire can dim down just as quickly as it had flared up, that Penelope actively chooses to dispel the impulse to anger. That her free hand goes up to twist through her hair, and she fixes him with a serious, evaluating stare, and her voice is soft, maybe almost uncertain, as she asks, "Would you rather I weren't?"

Gordon doesn't like _that_ , either, and he winces at the thought. His hands have already warmed the fingers of her left hand through, and he reaches for her right, folds this up too and gives a reassuring squeeze. It takes a few moments to be sure of what he wants to say, because it's important. Maybe more important than she realizes. He clears his throat before he starts. "Don't ever let me change the way you feel about anything, Pen. I'd hate that. I'm never gonna tell you not to be mad, I'm just—I'm trying to tell you don't _need_ to be. I've got four brothers, I've got a pretty good filter for the kinda shit they say. It _really_ didn't bother me."

And just like that, suddenly it's true.

Her fingers press against his, earnest. Light steals back into her eyes as she smiles, and says, "Then I have no reason to be angry, do I?"

Gordon likes this much better. "Not even a little bit."

"Mmm." But she hesitates a moment, and her bottom lip catches between her teeth, just briefly, doubtful. This is possibly the most lethal thing Gordon's ever seen Penelope do, and he's lucky she only does it for a fragment of a second, as it very nearly stops his heart. "If we're trading things other people have said about this whole state of affairs, then I _did_ tell Parker that I'd pass a message along on his behalf."

"Oh yeah?"

Her gaze drops momentarily to the tabletop, and she sighs a brief, faintly apologetic sigh. The candlelight catches her eyes again as she looks back up, this time with a chagrined little smile, "He _said_ to say that he'll wallop you, if you do anything untoward."

That's probably not funny, but Gordon can't help breaking into a grin anyway. He probably shouldn't be flattered—it would require a _very_ backwards notion of flattery to consider the threat of bodily harm to qualify—and yet he can't help but find himself absolutely delighted by the notion. "Oh, _h'will_ he?"

" _No_ ," Penelope answers, firmly. "Honestly—"

"You can tell Parker: he gets one free shot."

"Spoken like someone who's never seen Parker _hit_ anybody. And besides—" At this, she pulls her fingers free from his, but only so she can put a hand on the tabletop and rise smoothly to her feet. There wasn't much distance between them to begin with, but she closes it swiftly, even as he leans back in his chair. In heels—gold toned, four-inch stilettos—standing, she looms a little bit, before she seats herself, leaning against the edge of the table. Squarely and suddenly in the middle of his personal space, the outside of her left knee ghosts against the inside of his right. And her voice drops into a seductive, conspiratorial murmur, as she goes on, " _that_ statement would directly imply that you intend to do something untoward."

" _H'untoward_ ," he corrects automatically, poking fun at her absent bodyguard as a matter of reflex, even as his hand goes to the curve of her waist, the intensely pleasing shape of her body beneath the most goddamn perfect dress he's ever seen. He looks up at her, and wonders if rapt, absolute adoration is as transparently obvious on him as the barest suggestion of lust is subtle on _her_. He's still grinning at her, and still teasing as he says, "Perish the thought, your ladyship. Wouldn't _dream_ of it."

"Really?" Penelope shifts her weight, and then the outside of her knee finds the forward edge of his chair and the _inside_ of his thigh, as she comes that much closer. She makes every move casually, and yet it all feels calculated, deliberate. When she rests her forearms loosely on his shoulders, he's _sure_ she's done it as a subtle cue that he's meant to wrap his arms around her, so his hands rest at the small of her back, because that's just what _feels_ right. Her fingertips tease at the back of his skull, where his hair is the shortest, and her touch sends a shiver cascading down his spine. And her voice is soft, like she's telling him a secret, not that there's anyone else around to hear it, "I would. Perhaps I have."

She's made it sound so much like a secret that it's chased his voice away, left him failing to find more than one single word. Even then, it's one he has to borrow from her, echoing, "…perhaps?"

"Perhaps." She sighs, melodramatically tragic. "I can't ever remember, darling. I never remember my dreams." The hand that had been toying with his hair moves to his face instead, so that the next breath he takes is of the perfume that haunts the insides of her wrists. And her skin smells like lilacs and so _she_ smells like love, in the same way that lilacs smell of home. And her voice is the only thing in the whole entire _world_ as she continues, "But so very often, lately, I wake up thinking of you. Surely that must mean _something_."

He swallows, because it's the only way he can manage to get his voice back, and even then there's the very tiniest stammer to it as he says, "You think?"

"I think if _you_ don't do something _untoward_ sooner than later, dearheart, then _I'm_ going to have to." Emphasising her point, the pad of her thumb ghosts across his lips. He's too captivated to even think of kissing it. There's fire in her eyes again, and this time it's not the candlelight. Her gaze smolders, slow and consuming, as she says, "I think I've waited _weeks_ for you to touch me again. I think I spent all day, picking out the most _devastating_ dress. I think I've been wondering ever since dinner just exactly what French you could know that's unfit for public consumption."

"O-oh."

"Perhaps I can guess."

Gordon doesn't think so. "I don't think you'll guess."

She just smiles. " _Je veux être avec toi?_ "

He's been listening to her speak French all evening—but this is different. The tone of her voice isn't the breezy ease with which she'd had rapid-fire exchanges with their waiter. Her voice is low and slow and weighted with whatever meaning is explicit in her words, though as she buries her fingers in his hair again, he has to object, "I don't speak the language, Pen."

" _J'ai envie de toi_."

If this were a mission, and he had his comms, he would have a universal translator running in his ear, telling him just exactly what she's saying. She hasn't said the phrase he'd learned for the occasion, though, and he doesn't think she will, nor does he expect her to. Truthfully, he doesn't know if _he_ could, either. He's not even sure why he'd looked it up in the first place. Not sure he has the nerve, even now, with her body pressed against his chest and her fingers twining through his hair and her intentions blatantly, _transparently_ obvious. All he has to offer her is an apologetic smile and a shake of his head.

" _Embrasse-moi_?"

 _That_ sounds like what he's already doing, with his arms around her. So he gives her a little squeeze, at the same time that she leans forward to press a kiss against his forehead. "I don't think you're gonna get it," he tells her again.

That doesn't deter her from trying. " _Touches-moi? Prends-moi?_ " When he shakes his head again, she gives a shocked, scandalized little gasp and then, "Baise- _moi_?"

Gordon blinks. "…what was that last one?"

Her eyes widen slightly at the question and for a moment she looks surprised. " _Is_ it that last one?"

"No, it isn't—but what was it that you'd say it like _that_?"

Her answering laugh has a wicked note to it, and she just shakes her head. "Something that would've been _tremendously_ unladylike if I'd said it in English." And with that she sits herself daintily in his lap, and if the way things were going hadn't been clear already, that would've done it. Seated, she's still a little taller than he is. Her hand catches his jaw, though he's already looking up at her, and it just makes it seem all the more urgent, insistent when she kisses him. It's with her arms wrapped around his neck and her forehead tilted against his that she asks, "Are you going to tell me? Your little French secret?"

Gordon wonders if she can feel the heat rising in his cheeks against the palm of her hand. Wonders if the candlelight makes it obvious that he's blushing. "I don't think I should."

Her hand falls from his face to his chest, and her fingertips drum lightly against his collarbone. She tilts her head just slightly (adorably) and frowns. "Darling, I'm aware that your command of the language is limited, so if it would help for me to clarify: I _did_ just tell you to fuck me. I don't imagine it's much worse than that."

She's always going to be the reason he does things he probably shouldn't. Whether it's something as trivial as half a glass of champagne, or stretching his birthday out for an extra twenty-four hours, just so he could spend it with her—something about her brings him to the brink of the things he knows he shouldn't do.

And Gordon should know better— _does_ know better—but he just can't quite seem to help it, when he says, "I love you."

And _fuck_ , he forgot he was supposed to say it in French.


	16. cunning linguist

Of course, obviously, what he'd meant to say was, "Je t'aime."

The verb, of course, being aimer, from amer in Old French, which traces its roots all the way back to the present active infinitive amāre, of the Latin amō. Penelope's French is exquisite, and her Latin is passable. Not that her command of either language is terribly helpful here, considering what Gordon's gone and in perfectly unambiguous English.

And of course she isn't surprised. She'd have to be absolutely, unbelievably, completely bloody oblivious not to know how Gordon feels about her. He's never been anything less than obvious about it, and lately more so than ever. She's known this from the beginning—she'd known this going in. It's no small part of the reason she'd made the choice to initiate the whole thing, because she'd realized that he was in love with her.

Still. She is a little surprised that it's only taken him three weeks to feel like he can just say so.

It's a rather poignant coincidence that her hand has drifted to rest against his chest, because she imagines she can feel the beat of his heart beneath the palm of her hand. It's a reminder of just how careful she needs to be—how her greatest fear going into the whole situation was just that she would hurt him, that she might break his heart. She hadn't been sure of how, exactly, just that it was a consequence she hated to even consider.

So Penelope is acutely aware that she needs to go very carefully now.

"Je t'aime," she says, and smiles, "is what I think you meant to say."

It's funny about French, and especially about this particular phrase in French, just how easy it is to get it wrong. The language of love is something of a minefield, especially when it comes to love. All manner of homonyms and double-meanings lie in wait, lurking scandalously in the vicinity of other perfectly innocent turns of phrase. Penelope has, on more than one occasion, made an absolute ass of herself in French and had thereafter settled for nothing less than absolute fluency in the language. There's really only one way to properly say I love you in French.

Not, of course, that he'd said it in French.

"Yeah, that." But though he's still holding her, sat in his lap, he doesn't look up, and instead decides to bury his face against her shoulder, and he holds her little tighter as he does so. It's a tremendously vulnerable sort of gesture, rightly so, and she's quick to press a kiss against the crown of his head and hug him back, as he mumbles into her shoulder, muffled and embarrassed, "Sorry."

That won't do.

"No!" she protests, because this is precisely what she'd hoped to avoid, "No—darling, don't be. Please, don't be. There's no need."

Gordon pulls away and shakes his head, and when he looks up at her, Penelope's heart gives a little twinge of its own at the vulnerability in his eyes. "I shouldn't have—"

But she puts a finger to his lips and doesn't let him finish, cutting him off, "Really, dearest. It's not exactly as though I can't already tell."

There's the slightest spark in his eyes, then, the sort she would've missed if she weren't noticing how pleasing their agate-brown colour is by candlelight. Beneath the fingertip she has pressed against his lips, there's a flash of a half-smile he can't quite seem to help, as he comments, "And here I'm usually so subtle."

"As a brick through a window." Penelope kisses his forehead, affectionate. "But I like that about you. It's refreshing. And it's a tremendously endearing quality."

Gordon scoffs lightly, shaking his head, but his arms tighten around her, and she leans obligingly into the embrace. "Well, it's a quality, anyway."

"And I like it," she insists, and lightly flicks the tip of his nose with a manicured fingertip, and then pecks a kiss against the broken bridge of it. "And I like that you're in love with me."

It's immediately obvious that Gordon doesn't believe her and his suggestion of a hopeful smile twists into a rueful grimace, as he shakes his head. "You don't have to—"

"Humour you?" Penelope makes a mental note to kick Scott squarely and solidly in the ass the next time she sees him. "I'm not. I promise, I'm not. I wouldn't. Why is that something you'd find hard to believe?"

She wouldn't have asked if she didn't already know the answer, and this is something Gordon's going to need to learn about arguing with her. One day he might get better at it. But for now he's still preciously naive, and gives exactly the answer she's expecting, "Because you're not supposed to say that when you've only been with somebody for three weeks."

As she's expected this answer, she knows exactly how to challenge him on it. "But it's been so much longer than that, though, hasn't it? Or else you wouldn't have come looking for me in a back stairwell on your grandmother's birthday, because you had something so very important to tell me." Penelope kisses him again, and hopes he finds the gesture at least somewhat reassuring. "I knew, then. And I don't mind that you'd say so now. I think it's sweet."

"That's a funny way you've got of saying 'clingy and desperate'. Maybe it's the accent."

Penelope knows only a handful of people who can really pull off ironic self-deprecation, and Gordon isn't one of them. "Gordon," she chides softly. "Don't do that. Please. I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it. Taking a leaf from your book, perhaps."

"Right. My book. Acclaimed New York Times Best Seller: 'Three Little Words Not to Say on a First Date'."

Penelope shakes her head and corrects him, "The Lost Art of Sincerity, more like."

"Idiots and the Sincerely Stupid Things They Say."

"Gordon, stop." Sharply, now, perhaps a little moreso than she'd meant to be, except that she really can't stand it. One day he'll learn. One day he'll understand her absolute and utter refusal to tolerate it, when he talks himself down. "Please. I so hate it when you do that, darling, please don't."

This is perhaps the first time she's actively scolded him, and she can tell by the way he stares up at her with wide brown eyes, suddenly dumbfounded, like a puppy who's had a newspaper bounced off his nose as punishment for some minor transgression. "Sorry," he says automatically, sheepish and contrite.

"You haven't said anything stupid," she tells him again, decisive and firm.

He shrugs awkwardly and shifts where he sits, so that she takes her cue to stand, and he gets to his feet beside her. "Well, I've sure as hell said something I can't take back," he tries again, angling for a last word he hasn't the faintest hope of getting.

Penelope steps neatly into his personal space again, leans right up against him as she wraps her arms around his neck. Obligingly, automatically, his hands move to rest lightly at her waist. "No," she murmurs, and lifts her chin just slightly, challenging. "Mine now."

And deep down she's relieved when he smiles, a flash of sunshine that means the storm has passed—temperamental, inconsequential little squall that it was—and everything's fine again. To the point that he's willing to tease her, "Careful, Pen, your imperialism's showing."

For some reason, she takes that as a compliment. "Mmm. I do tend to take the things I want."

Gordon grins at her. "Pax, Britannia."

Penelope giggles at that, and stretches upward onto her toes, closing the necessary distance to press an insistent kiss against his lips, and if she doesn't know if she loves him quite yet, then she does love the way that he kisses her back. One of his hands lingers at her waist, but the other slides smoothly up the bare skin of her back as he pulls her closer still.

This is a language they're still learning from each other, though there are moments of breathtaking fluency between them. Never quite where Penelope expects, and just often enough that he still surprises her, every now and again. With the way his hands move or the surety with which he'll kiss her, all his easy, natural confidence when his tongue slips between her teeth.

She's been backed up against—nearly onto—the wrought iron table, though she doesn't realize it until it screeches backwards behind her, metal legs scraping against the tiles of the terrace, so that she starts and he stops. It breaks the mood so abruptly that she gasps, catches herself against him, though he'd never in a million years let her fall. Embarrassed, she bows her head shyly against his shoulder and concludes, "Perhaps we should go back inside. I forget, it's much later than it seems."

"Probably." They're near enough to the edge of the balcony that Gordon can reach up, can trail his fingers lightly through the deep blue of a false summer sky, distorting the image as thousands upon thousands of minuscule nanites rearrange themselves around the sudden disturbance. Sparks of shimmering gold light trail from his fingertips, though he shakes his wrist briskly as he drops his hand again, scattering fragments of a holographic sky as whatever nanites he's pulled away from the field scramble to regain coherence with each other. "These things only work one way, you know."

While no one's supposed to know that she's here, Penelope's still possessed of a deeply ingrained paranoia about the ubiquity of the press and the lengths they'll go to get that perfect shot of her in a compromising position. The penthouse is eight stories up and there aren't any comparably tall buildings in the vicinity, but Penelope's known the paparazzi to follow her with drones when they're feeling especially determined. Glancing over the balcony, uncomfortably aware that what's she's seeing isn't what's really there, she's suddenly anxious that someone might be watching. "Really?"

"I mean, unless this is a suite of binary-nanites configured for a dual matrix, which you'll sometimes get in really high-tech industrial settings, but not so much in recreational use. The processing power required for their resonance array gets, like, an entire order of magnitude more complex if they have to project more than one image at the same time. Generally not worth it, unless it's for really intricate rendering."

"Now you're showing off," she accuses, but it's hard to conceal the fact that this is delightful and she adores it. "And to think you've tried to tell me you're an idiot."

He scoffs at that, shaking his head. "Ha. I think we both know that the ability to rattle off a bunch of vague technobabble isn't necessarily a reliable indicator that a guy isn't also a blithering idiot."

One of these times she's just going to slap him. But for now she settles for an exasperated sigh. "Gordon, you're not. Don't do that. You're really very clever."

"Well, I was thinking of Langstrom Fischler, actually, but hey, I'll still take it."

Penelope wrinkles her nose at that, makes a face. "Before we go any further, darling, I'm going to need you to thoroughly banish any and all thoughts of Mr. Fischler."

Gordon grins and winks. "I'll leave 'em at the door, Pen, promise."

That seems as good a reason as any to get through the door in question, and sooner rather than later. She kisses him once, lightly, and then moves deliberately past him, trailing a hand against the silk of his shirt as she makes her way back towards the door.

The inside of the penthouse isn't that much warmer than she'd made the terrace outside, but the sounds of the city outside are stilled into silence as the glass door slides closed. Just inside, Penelope stops, steps out of the gold toned pair of heels she'd worn for the night. Gordon's only a few steps and a few moments behind her, and does the same with a pair of black dress shoes. He loses perhaps an inch of extra height, compared to the full five and a half inches Penelope had on loan from Christian Louboutin.

And abruptly she's so jarringly tiny beside him that she has to step quickly away, her steps light and nimble across the floor. There are cool tiles beneath her bare feet as she crosses to the plush white carpet of the sitting room, to seat herself on the couch. This is an absolutely enormous monstrosity of a thing, L-shaped and dominating the room, richly upholstered in shimmering sapphire velvet and appointed with a dozen fluffy, overstuffed velvet cushions. It's a big enough piece of furniture that she's acutely aware of how small she is in contrast, especially with her shoes and her chosen companion both abandoned by the terrace door. Still, she summons up all available gravitas and reclines languidly against the pillows, crosses her legs at the ankles, before lifting a hand and then flicking a beckoning finger in Gordon's direction; a come-hither type of gesture, perfectly defined.

But he doesn't.

Instead he lingers by the door, silhouetted against the lights of the skyline behind him, just looking at her.

Penelope's accustomed to people looking at her. At charity galas, at assorted state dinners, at restaurant or gallery openings, there are all manner of places where she's expected to put in an appearance, as though her appearance is all that's valuable. Hers is a life lived in the crosshairs of a camera lens, sometimes it feels like half of her purpose is just to be seen.

Gordon looks at her in a way that no one else seems to, in a way that makes her feel as though no one else ever sees her like he does.

"Just so I don't forget to say," he starts, shifting where he stands on the other side of the room, slipping his hands into his pockets and dropping his gaze to the floor, uncharacteristically shy, "Just—before anything else, Penny, I just…I wanted to thank you. For tonight. Any time I ever I thought about being with you, I never let myself imagine this part. I never thought it could be real. And it's all been better than anything I would've come up with. So…thank you."

This makes her smile, brings a warm flush of pleasure to her cheeks; a quiet, personal joy at just how sweet he is, how sincere. It really is one of the most beautiful and and the most dangerous things about him, because deep down she can feel herself wanting to fall for him, just as totally and completely as he's fallen for her. Even if it has only been three weeks. "You're so very, verywelcome, dearest."

At that she holds her hand out again; not beckoning this time, but imploring, reaching out because she wants him, and wants it to be clear just exactly how much. "Come here," she orders, but coyly, more of an expectant invitation than an actual command. "I've some French I'd like to teach you."

That finally summons up the wicked grin she's been waiting for, and the flash of mischief in his brown eyes, as he does as he's been told, and crosses the room.

He takes her hand, but doesn't seat himself beside her. Instead he takes the hand she's held out to him, and gently kisses the ridge of her knuckles, before taking a knee in front of the couch, and then settling himself down on the floor before her. She straightens up as his left hand wraps around her right ankle, slides smoothly up her calf to rest atop her knee. He's good at this part. He's very good at this part, and she tries not to think of whoever must have come before her, that he could be this good at this part. She's not bad at this part herself, but being with him again is a reminder of just how much better he is. How easily and naturally he seems to take the lead, and how content she is to let him. The palm of his hand is warm against her skin, and he props his chin on his other hand, leaning against the seat of the couch as he looks up at her.

And it's amazing how quickly the warmth in his eyes becomes intensity. How his gaze can go from something that sees through to the heart of her—to something that undresses her, lays her bare before him, before she's even shed so much as a stitch of clothing. The way he smiles, slow and unsubtle, as he plays along.

"You said a bunch of French things, before."

Penelope smiles. "I did, yes."

"What were they?"

"The sorts of things I hoped you might want to say to me."

The skirt of her dress is long, though she'd pulled it up just slightly as she sat down, exposing her knees. His fingers slip beneath the hem and push it further up over the outside curve of her thigh, as his hand moves further up her leg. "And…?"

"Oh, let me think…"

Penelope closes her eyes and leans back against the couch, pretends she needs to think about it. Now that she's stopped looking at him, she hears it; feels it when Gordon shifts where he sits, and his other hand gently goes to her other ankle, slides up her calf again and teases her knees apart, just slightly. She sighs softly as she recites her first guess, "Je veux être avec toi."

"What's that one?"

"I want you to be with me."

"I like that one. Je vous—"

"Veux, darling. From vouloir. To want."

"Je veux être avec toi."

She opens her eyes to smile at him, even as his left hand continues to move lightly over the skin of her thigh, rubbing gentle circles over her skin. "You've a very good ear for language," she tells him, in lieu of telling him he's got a verygood sense of touch.

He kisses one of her kneecaps as thanks. "What else did you want me to say?"

"J'ai envie de toi."

"J'ai envie de toi," he repeats, dutifullly. "What's that one?"

"'I want you'. More or less. Literally, 'I have need of you' if we're being very technical about the language."

His hand has found its way to the top of her thigh, and started to tease at the band of elastic at the top. She's not sure what exactly he might be able to see from where he sits, but for tonight she's chosen a soft, lacy thong in a pale, alabaster white. His fingertips trace gently along the line between the fabric and her bare skin, as he echoes her again, softly, this time. "I want you."

"I think I like that better in English."

"I need you."

"Much better in English."

This time he bows his head to kiss the inside of her thigh, and the anticipation is enough to make her shiver and draw a deep breath, before she reaches out to bury her fingers in his hair, as she murmurs another phrase, "Embrasse-moi."

That one gets him to push himself up, onto his knees, and to move his hands over her body as she straightens up where she sits, rises to meet him. He does what he thinks he's been told, and takes her into his arms. "I got that one," he tells her, murmuring in her ear as his face nuzzles against hers, though he's wrong about that. "I think, anyway. Embrace me?"

She does, but it's not that. "No. Kiss me, actually."

He's offended that he's gotten it wrong, but it doesn't stop him from holding her. "That's dumb," he declares, annoyed. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still gonna kiss you, but it's goddamn dumb that that's the word for it."

"So dumb," she agrees solemnly, and lifts her face so he can kiss her. And she kisses him back.

And again and again and again, until he's no longer on the floor but on top of her, and she's been left breathless beneath him. She can feel the rich softness of the velvet couch cushions against the skin of her bare back, and realizes that he's lost his suit jacket. Her hands are twisted up in the silk of his shirt, the one she'd chosen just for him, so that she could do just this. The one she'd buried her face against and breathed in the scent of, before she'd tucked it into the box that she'd sent him for his birthday. The one she'd thought of tearing open, tearing off him, in the way she wants to now. Instead, in an exercise of incredible restraint, she reaches up and starts to undo mother of pearl buttons, one by one. Her eagerness betrays her, because this suddenly seems like an incredibly complicated task and her fingers fumble over nacre and silk. She tries for a few moments more, before she gets impatient and reaches for the hem of his shirt, and he takes the hint, sits up and pulls it off in a single, swift motion.

"What else?" he asks, and his shirt joins his jacket on the other side of the coffee table, as he tosses it casually across the room. His bare skin is immediately inviting, and she can't help but reach out and touch him, as he settles back down beside her. And this time she really does have to think, suddenly very distracted, before she can remember just what she'd said.

"Touch me," she answers, not bothering with the French this time. These are things she'd wanted to say to him, anyway, hiding coyly behind a language they don't share, toying with him. She's not hiding any longer. They're well past the time for games. "Take me."

At least one of these acts is already in progress, and his fingertips find the edges of her neckline, the line of stark black across her collarbones. Her dress is tight and her breasts are bare beneath it, and she thinks incongruently of the bra she'd left abandoned on the floor of her dressing room, and how she's glad it's not an obstacle now. Nothing stops him from touching her as she shimmies out of the bodice of her dress, arching her back obligingly as he pulls it down, over her hipbones. Her hands come free of her long sleeves and he catches one of her wrists, kisses the inside of it. His other hand hasn't been idle, has ghosted up her thigh to gather the fabric bunched around her waist, and her perfect dress is deftly removed, pulled down over her knees and dropped carelessly, indifferently on the floor, its purpose fulfilled.

And he stops, then, just to lean back and look at her again. The lights in the room are dimmed down, it's past midnight now. What light exists in the room comes through the windows, through the French doors out onto the terrace, though the soft glow of the City of Light seems so distant. It seems like the whole world begins and ends at the bounds of a blue velvet couch, and yet Penelope still manages to find herself lost in the way he looks at her.

"How do I tell you you're beautiful?"

In the act of asking the question, technically he already has—but she meant it when she told him she'd never tire of hearing it from him, because he seems to mean it more than anyone else ever has. ""Tu es belle.'"

"Tu es belle," he repeats, and shakes his head, mocks a regretful little sigh. "I better learn some more languages, because you're gonna get sick of hearing me say it."

"Never," she declares, and then offers the same compliment right back to him, with atypical shyness, "But I should say—you are, too, darling. Tres beau, chéri."

He lights up at that, plainly flattered, and his grin is bright and quick and genuine. "Gosh, Pen, gonna make me blush."

She smiles, reaches up to run her fingertips lightly down his arm. "That's the very least of what I hope to do tonight, darling."

"On that note, remind me—what was that last thing you said?"

There's only one other thing left. Something she wouldn't have been able to say in public, not even in Paris, where no one cares what she says or what she does or who she's with. Something unequivocal, explicit, without the slightest ambiguity—and it doesn't need repeating. He knows what she meant, because she'd told him. Unequivocally, explicitly, and without ambiguity. So he really has no business asking, and she can't help teasing him, just a little bit, "You know perfectly well what I said."

Gordon, being Gordon, presses the point at the same time as he bows his face to hers, presses a kiss against her lips as incentive. "Still like to hear you say it."

"Baise-moi."

"Not like that."

"No?"

"Nah."

"Oh, well—"

And from between them interrupting, though neither of them recognize it immediately, there's a soft, two-toned chime. It stops, and then repeats. Muffled, from the place where her bare skin presses against his hip, the pocket of his trousers. It's not her private comm, but it's the exact same sound her comm makes, intimately familiar, and common to all IR hardware. It cuts her off, before she can say anything, and she feels him freeze beside her.

And it's over before it even begins, as he sits up, fishing in his pocket. He pulls it out, stares at the screen for a tortuously long few moments, and then all but growls, "Oh, fuck me."


	17. villain

They all have downtime, even John.

Time taken off of rotation is necessary in so many aspects—physical, emotional, mental, social. _Legal_ , in some cases. International Rescue isn't a job, it's their family's entire life, but that doesn't change the fact that the Global Aviation Authority prohibits pilots from flying for longer than eight hours within a twenty-four hour period. This is just another factor that needs to be taken into account when sending a Thunderbird anywhere, and it's something that John accounts for, keeps track of. It's the reason why Virgil rarely goes anywhere without a co-pilot—because TB2 can fly for that much longer with a second pilot onboard. It's why Scott has more liberty to fly solo—TB1 is fast enough that he spends less time in the air overall.

The rules for space travel are different. The rules for piloting a submarine are different. TB5 exists in a nebulous gray area where the amont of sleep John's required to get isn't actually regulated, per se. Despite being the sole operator of a space-faring vessel, the fact that TB5 spends most of its time in the orbital equivalent of "park" means that he's not subject to the same rules. So he sets his own schedule, absorbs and redistributes his time around when International Rescue needs him, and mostly it all comes out in the wash.

Mostly.

For John's part, most of his downtime gets spent catching up on sleep. He doesn't really care what his brothers do with their time off, so long as they remain in contact and he can get in touch with them if he needs to. Scott and Gordon are really the only two out of his four brothers who he has any chance of catching in the middle of anything they won't want interrupted. Mostly John keeps tabs from a distance, and tries not to intrude upon his brothers' personal time unless it's a matter of utmost need.

So, it's not like he's never had to do this before.

And to be fair, John had been told not to call, so he _hasn't_ called. He's done what he always does in scenarios like these, and sent a discrete text message—flagged with a bright red [PRIORITY] code so it'll ring continuously until acknowledged—to his brother's comm. The sort of situation he might be interrupting isn't a situation he wants to pop up holographically in the middle of, for his own sake as much as Gordon's.

So he hasn't called Gordon. It's been two minutes since his initial message was recieved, and all John can do is drift in his commsphere, waiting for Gordon to call him back. If, for whatever completely unfathomable reason, Gordon _declines_ to call him back, John's next course of action will be to call Penelope.

Somehow, he's formed the opinion that if he needs to call _Penelope_ because he couldn't get ahold of Gordon, this whole situation is going to go from bad to worse.

And it's already pretty bad.

There are a few more hours' worth of February 14th still left in the world, and it's looks like it's going to be well into February 15th before John gets any sleep of his own. He's starting to flirt with the beginning of that becoming a problem, but it's a fair ways down the list of problems he has to solve, so for now he'll just have to cope with the fatigue and the burgeoning headache, and his brothers will have to cope with his gradually shortening temper.

John rubs his eyes as there's a chime from over his shoulder, turns to find EOS has rendered her avatar in the space behind him and feels that warm, familiar burst of gratitude at the sight of his partner. He's lucky that he's not alone in trying to keep up with it all.

"I have Thunderbird One calling," she announces, though there's a cool blue note in her tone that makes John think she's not happy to be passing this on. "I told him I would let you know he was on the line." He wonders wearily just what his eldest brother had said to get past her, because she's insistently taken over management of Scott and Alan's missions, leaving him free to deal with the situation in Greenland.

The situation in Greenland is the reason he's called Gordon. Scott cannot _possibly_ contribute anything useful or worthwhile to the situation in Greenland, has a situation of his own to deal with in the Andes, and so on the whole John would prefer not to have to deal with _him_ —but his older brother will still want an update. John doesn't _have_ an update, and won't until Gordon calls him back.

He starts to sigh, but catches himself, and his breath hisses through his teeth like exasperation instead. So he rolls with it. "Tell him I'll call him back as soon as I've gotten ahold of Gordon."

"He's under the impression that you've already gotten ahold of Gordon. He wants me to patch him through to Gordon's comm."

That's the worst idea John's heard across all forty-eight hours of February fourteenth. "Under _absolutely no circumstance_ is Scott getting patched through to Gordon's comm. Jesus, that's the _last_ thing I need right now. Tell him the only update I have is that he needs to _shut up_ , _fuck off_ , and let me _handle this_."

"I'll pass that along."

"Thank you."

"Rendered in more situationally appropriate language."

This time the sigh gets the better of him. "Please."

EOS gives a digitzed little chuckle, though there's a note of sympathy in it. "I don't know what you'd do without me."

"I don't know what _Scott_ would do without you, because I'd have bitten his head off by now."

"After _that_ presumably he wouldn't do much else. We'll keep fratricide by decapitation in our back pocket. Just as an option."

John's spared from having to come up with any further banter by the chime of Gordon's comm connecting to his main line, and EOS, taking her cue, disappears behind him, back to the secondary comms and Scott and Alan. John turns back to the corner of the commsphere he'd reserved for Paris and finds his little brother _glowering_ at him. The first thing Gordon says is nothing less than flat, black, barely-restrained fury—

"Somebody'd better be _fucking dead_ , John."

Being the bearer of bad news does not make John a bad person. If occasionally these sorts of interruptions get him cast as the villain in the personal narratives of his brother's lives—well. They all have a real live _actual_ supervillain as a basis for comparison, and John's aware that he isn't in the same league. He's been working on it, but he still can't quite manage the maniacal laugh.

And he's been doing this for long enough that he doesn't take it personally, because he can understand that his brother is frustrated by the interruption. If John's tastes ran rather chintzier than they actually do, then the motto cross-stitched and framed above his bed would read "Don't Shoot The Messenger". Instead, and rather ironically, he has a bumper sticker affixed to the interior wall of the gravity ring where a warning label used to live. Bookended by smiley-faces and a long-ago present from Gordon, who seems as though he could do with the reminder: _Shit Happens_

John's observant enough to note that his little brother seems to have lost not only his tie, but the shirt that went along with it. This is a context-clue that helps explain the fervour of his reaction, but otherwise John coolly disregards the fact, and explains, "Virgil fell about seventy-five feet into a crevasse in Greenland and he's pretty sure his leg's broken. Is that near enough to dead or should I call back when it's all gotten worse?"

"He _what_?"

This is the sort of situation that needs breaking down to its absolute essentials. "Fell. Into a crevasse. In Greenland. He's okay except for the broken leg. He went down wearing the rig Kayo would need to get him out. Alan's on the Moon. Scott's in the Andes. You're closest."

" _Ugh._ " But Gordon's already starting to pull his shirt back on, though he swears a muttered blue streak beneath his breath as he does. "All right. _All right_ , okay. Fucking…just—fucking, _fine_ , then. _Fine_. Just fucking _dandy_. That _idiot_. That _asshole_. In a _crevasse_! On my fucking birthday!"

This is a technicality that John allows to slide, because while it's no longer February 14th in Paris, it'll be February 14th for another seven hours in the time zone of Gordon's actual birth, and for another fourteen hours in the world generally. "Yes, I'm sure he did it especially to spite you, especially for your birthday."

"Goddamn _moron_."

"I've got Tracy One on the runway at Le Bourget with a clear flightpath to Kangerlussuaq. Your backup gear's aboard. I'll tell Kayo to—"

Gordon interrupts, as Gordon tends to. "In T-1? What the hell kind of ETA am I gonna have in _T-1_?"

"At top speed? If you leave now, you'll be there inside an hour." John had taken this all very carefully into account, when booking Tracy-One to fly his brother out to Paris. "T-1's faster than TB2. _Fireflash's_ engines were protoyped off of T-1's. Dad used to break out in hives if he ever had to travel in anything that wasn't capable of achieving at _least_ Mach 5. Tracy One used to do New York to London on Dad's lunchbreak."

"If you like it so much, howzabout _you_ come down and fly _your_ scrawny ass to Greenland?"

"Yeah, me and my six hours of sleep over the past thirty-eight will just drop _everything else_ and _do that_. Right. _Sure_." John feels the tiniest tic of his lower left eyelid and automatically takes a deep, steadying breath, quelling the rising flare of sarcasm before he can scorch his brother from the surface of the Earth below. He gets back on track, back to his briefing, "Tracy One is waiting at the airport. It won't be able to land, the ice shelf destabilized with the aftershock that opened up this crevasse—you know, the one with _our brother in it_ —and the immediate area around it won't take anything like an aircraft's weight. Kayo's had to take TB2 further inland onto stable ground. You're going to have to parachute down, but—"

Gordon grumbles to himself, but he's also in the process of putting on his shoes. He continues, going on as though he hasn't heard or acknowledged the information John's trying to pass on. "D'you know the worst thing about this—the _worst thing_ —is that you have _no idea_ what you're interrupting. You don't _do this_ —never _have_ —and so you have no context. None! You just have absolutely no analogue for what you've got to be sorry for. Right? Like I am the last guy on the planet who's gonna give you shit for your whole 'waifish intellectual space-virgin' schtick, but for fuck's _sake_ , John. _Literally_."

John sometimes wonders if a sense of irony is something that can be concussed out of a person.

Their mother used to tell them to take a deep breath and count for ten seconds when they got frustrated with each other, before it could all devolve into yelling and hitting and general carrying on. In the interests of efficiency, John's pared that time down to about two seconds.

 _One Mississippi, two Mississippi…._

And then a slow, patient exhale. And a perfectly steady, even tone of voice, carefully caliibrated for disaster and stupid-useless- _idiot_ little brothers—

"I'm glad you had a nice time in Paris. Your nice time in Paris was entirely contingent on _me_ , rearranging _literally everything else_ around getting you an _extra_ twenty-four hours off rotation— _with the caveat_ that you remain available in reserve. _In case of emergency_. Our brother is _wedged halfway down in a crevasse in Greenland_. That qualifies as _an emergency_."

There's a pause. It's a little too long a pause, when one of John's brothers is wedged halfway down a crevasse in Greenland.

"…if he can wait about an hour for me to get there, d'you think he could wait an hour and a half?"

This is going to take a third Mississippi.


	18. victim

Oscar Wilde wrote, " _We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars._ "

It's a little too cloudy tonight for Virgil to have a clear view of the stars overhead. But this far north, this time of year and at this time of night, at least he's got the Aurora Borealis.

The crevasse he's gotten himself stuck in had started its existence as nothing more than a crack in the surface of the ice. There'd been an aftershock, another icequake that had been just enough to split the shelf apart. Kayo in TB2 had already snagged and lifted away the climate station they were there to retrieve, and Virgil and his exosuit were left scrambling for solid ground. In a warmer climate he might've managed to clear the rift in the ice as it broke open in front of him—but his exosuit's hydraulics are known to get gummy, a little less responsive in extreme cold, and he'd only _just_ fallen short of the other side.

As falls go, it was neither straightforward nor elegant, rather a bouncing, scrabbling descent along the inside face of the crevasse, an uncoordinated tumble that terminated about seventy feet below the surface, when the same suit that had failed him became too wide to fit any further down and made up for its initial failure by arresting his descent. It was the sort of fall into the sort of sudden darkness that was difficult to distinguish from a loss of consciousness, but when he came back around or his eyes adjusted or whichever exactly it was, he found himself caught at an awkward and undignified angle, stunned and winded and with a sharp pain radiating from below his left knee. And John in his ear, repeating a request for his status—calm and patient as ever, but with that undercurrent of restrained urgency that creeps into his voice whenever his brothers stop answering him.

But he'd been okay then and he's okay now, probably-broken leg aside. His exosuit is stuck halfway down a crevasse and he's stuck in his exosuit, but he'd be worse off without it, so that's something. He's cramped, and though his suit is climate controlled and well-insulated against even these kinds of temperatures, he's starting to imagine the chill seeping in. He's tired and hurting and feeling like a bit of an idiot for not flushing his exosuit's lines and adding a more cold tolerant hydraulic fluid—but he also kind of has to pee, so he's also trying not to dwell on the thought of flushing any kind of fluid anywhere.

And on the whole, it could've been a hell of a lot worse.

But then, Virgil's always tried to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. In this case, he considers himself lucky to be wedged only _halfway_ down a crevasse, instead of all the way at the bottom. And if the lining of the clouds tonight isn't silver, per se, but a shimmering, iridescent green—well. At least it's his favourite colour. At least the coldness of the night means the skies are (almost) clear, not that he's anything less than insulated against it in his polar gear. He'd had the chance to dress appropriately for the climate, so that's something he's got going for him.

He's also probably got a broken leg, though with the awkward angle he's landed at and the closeness of the quarters, he doesn't really have much other than pain to back that diagnosis up.

At least it's only one leg. And probably only a fracture.

And even the pain isn't _that_ bad. He's had to assure everybody involved that he can tolerate waiting for Gordon to get here—and Gordon _will_ get here—because he's fine. He's had to firmly discourage Kayo from attempting to climb down on her own, because without backup readily available she risks getting stuck along with him, or falling even further down. He's had to fend off John's insistent fussing and fretting, because John micromanages when he's anxious. His elder brother's nerves are starting to fray, and that's never good for anyone.

And on cue his comm chimes, as though just the thought of his big brother is enough to summon his attention, and Virgil picks up the call with a wearily reassuring grin ready and waiting. If he disengages his left arm from the exosuit, he can bring it up to the level of his face so John can see him, and he does so. "I'm still okay," he says, before John can get a word out. He wriggles his other arm free and offers a thumbs up as extra proof. "Just chilling."

The temperatures are currently well below freezing, so that's the joke. John doesn't laugh. John glowers at him from orbit, with the sort of absence of sympathy that a _real_ rescue victim certainly wouldn't have to suffer. "That's not funny."

Virgil shrugs, or attempts to, though the angle at which he's landed makes it an awkward gesture. He toggles the holographics off on his wrist comm, falls back on his helmet radio as he apologizes, "Sorry, Jaybird. Just trying to be the model rescue victim. Calm. Patient. In good spirits. Aware of how lucky I am that International Rescue exists and keeps supersonic aircraft just lying around, in case of emergency." He pauses, and adds, "But I get that you're worried. I'm just saying, you don't need to worry about me. I'm good."

"I'm not _worried_." There's an edge to John's voice, and Virgil's acutely aware that it's the stress bleeding through. For his part, it's probably somewhat less stressful to be wedged halfway down a crevasse in Greenland than to have to figure out how to to _unwedge_ someone from halfway down a crevasse in Greenland. Especially with TB2 in the hands of an inexperienced pilot and Gordon sorta-kind-somewhat off the roster, in a manner they've all had to go out of their way to accommodate. "I don't _worry_."

Well, of course not. You'd sooner catch John dead than worried. Worry is _tremendously_ unprofessional. Worry is also measurable by the number of times John's called in the past hour, and this call makes eight. "No, sure. No, of course you're not. I'm just saying—"

John interrupts him, defensive, and his voice is sharp and short. "I've got everything _under control_."

He has, actually. And Virgil isn't worried. "Right. Which is why _I'm_ not worried."

He's tried to be reassuring, but John's still atypically waspish. "I didn't call because I'm _worried_ , I called to tell you that I've got Tracy-One starting its approach. Kayo's already dropped a pod and all the gear Gordon needs, she'll be standing by for pickup as soon as you're both topside and clear of any instability. It's all under control. It's fine. You'll be _fine_."

"Yeah, _I_ know that. John, it's—"

"I _handled it_. None of it was supposed to _fuck up_ like this, but _shit happens_ and that's just the way things _are_ , but I _fixed it_ and it's _fine_."

It's hard not to wince at that. Even a hairline fracture in John's usual flawless composure is cause for concern. This is a splintering, shattered _crack_.

Scott's in the Andes. Alan's on the Moon. Gordon's en route, and Kayo's standing by. Virgil's wedged halfway down a crevasse in Greenland. And thousands of miles from anyone, John's in the middle of all of it, everywhere and nowhere all at once. It's a high-pressure job, and sometimes some of that pressure needs to be released. It doesn't happen often.

"Hey," Virgil says, breaking further from the mold of the typical rescue victim and offering some gentle reassurance to the person directing his rescue. "I'm _really_ all right, though. And Gordon's gonna be here in a minute, and he's gonna tell me I'm an asshole for ruining his birthday and I'm gonna tell him he's a con-artist for trying to have a forty-eight hour day off. And _then_ he'll haul me outta here, and Kayo will pick us up and tell us we're _both_ idiots, and then we'll all fly home. And it'll all be fine, John, okay? I think we got it covered from here on out. Link our comms into a separate relay and tag out. You've got three whole operatives handling this one. IR's _finest_. So like you said; it's all under control."

There's a long silence from orbit, a faint crackle of static over the comm in his ear. He might just hear the subtle sound of his older brother, taking a deep breath and letting it go. His surface glossing over again, like water washing over ice and freezing smooth. And then, back to his usual ascetic calm and arid sense of humour, "You're in a crevasse, you don't count."

Virgil rolls his eyes, but he can tell that he's been listened to, by the way his brother's tone has evened out. "Two and a half of us, then."

"Two and a quarter."

It's hard not to be offended by that. " _Hey_. I'm at substantially better than twenty-five percent capacity. Jesus. Gimme some credit."

" _You're_ three-quarters. Gordon's _half_ because biometrics when he put on his spare gear came back with a non-zero BAC— _don't-tell-Scott_ — _and_ because he called me a waifish space-virgin, _despite_ the fact that I'm currently _not telling Scott_ about his non-zero BAC. _Kayo's_ the only one who's managed to actually get the job done _as assigned_. And she's our _security officer_."

Kayo's a big part of the reason that Virgil hadn't taken the time to flush and recharge his hydraulic lines. So he very carefully curtails his train of thought away from the exchange of fluids in any context, and answers, "Well, Kayo's always been pretty versatile." There's a double-meaning _there_ too, but he mentally skirts around it and clears his throat. "She did good."

"Yeah." Then it's back to business. "I've got her in a separate channel for you, I'll switch you over. Gordon just jumped out of the back of T-1, he'll be on the ground in about three minutes. I'll patch him in once he's landed."

"Thanks, J. Take it easy, okay? Is EOS backing you up?"

"She's coordinating a mission for Alan, but she says Scott's trying to get through to me directly, probably to yell at me about Gordon, so I better go handle _that_."

He sounds tired. Virgil's tired too, but he's still got his comms available, and it's not like he's doing much else, so he makes the offer, "If I've got three minutes before Gordon gets here, then I could probably deal with Scooter for you."

There's a remarkable amount of incredulity in the few seconds of silence that follow. "Virgil, you're embedded seventy-five feet deep in a glacier. _Stop helping._ " But John pauses and his tone moderates slightly, loses the edge that goes with the arms and armor of professional composure; and instead gains the rare softness that goes with sincerity, gratitude. "Thanks, though. Sorry for snapping. Before."

As though he would need to clarify. "You're okay, Johnny."

John sighs. "Yeah. For a given value of 'okay', I guess I am. But I'm coming down after today's finally over. Chip some ice off of Greenland for me, I'm gonna want a drink."

Virgil grins. "Man, you and me both. Will do."

"I better go call Scott."

"FAB, brother. See you on the ground. Call me if you need me."

"I _absolutely_ will not. I will not be doing that. Patching you over to TB2's comms. Standby."

A few moments of silence pass and then he hears a soft chime as his comms reconnect. He waits for Kayo to hail him, and she doesn't. A few more moments, and then he does it himself, "Iceman calling TB2, you reading me?"

It's an attempt to break the ice. Kinda lame and maybe a little feeble, but Kayo's been terse and short and reticent ever since thing started going sideways. There'd been a moment—the last thing he remembers before pinballing his way down between two sheer walls of ice—when he'd heard her yell his name, voice torn with something that might have almost have been panic, if Kayo ever panicked. Which she doesn't, of course, so it obviously wasn't that.

What he's heard from her since then has been by proxy, in the immediate aftermath of his inconvenient little tumble, looped into a relay with her and John, working the problem. Her solution, while direct and to the point ("I'll just go down and get him?"), hadn't been in line with the way they do things, had represented too much avoidable risk. Virgil's situation was annoying, but far from dire. Better to wait for backup, in whatever form that would take. If Gordon had been along to begin with, it wouldn't have been a problem. Kayo had gotten quiet after that, occupied with flying TB2 back onto solid ground, and then further south to deliver their rescued climatologists and their associated weather station to the nearest semblance of civilization.

"Copy."

And that's all she says.

So that's not great.

There's another damningly relevant train of thought he's been avoiding—but alone in a private comm channel, with Kayo on the other end of the line, it's hard not to think about how this could've been avoided. It's nobody's _fault_ —it's certainly not _Kayo's_ —but it's hard not to feel like there's something like karma, playing wickedly over the consequences of their actions. TB2 had spent a grand and exhilarating total of thirty-six minutes on autopilot, and if possibly those thirty-six minutes should've been spent making sure his exosuit was in peak operating condition—well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Live and learn.

And Virgil doesn't blame anybody, even if it _had_ been her idea. Because it takes two to tango, and it hadn't even _occurred_ to him to turn her down.

Virgil's pretty sure he can hear her blaming herself in the radio silence that lingers between them. And he hates that he doesn't know what to say—but even if he did, he knows _she'd_ hate it if he tried to say it anywhere anyone else might overhear. He wishes he could say something. Just _anything_ , just to break through the tension building up between them—

"—I'm sorry."

It takes him a moment to realize she's actually said something, because she doesn't sound like herself. There's something caught in her voice, something that makes him think she might betray something secret if she tried to say more, even though there's no one else around to hear. It's an apology— _not_ that she owes him anything like an apology—that sounds like a secret, because no one can know what she has to be sorry _for_.

"Hey…no, don't be. Come on, Kayo, don't be. Shit happens. It was an accident. This wasn't—I mean, come on. We didn't—"

"We shouldn't have."

And there's no way not to know exactly what she means. There's also nothing he can say in response to it, because Gordon's going to be chiming in any second now, and their comm channel isn't safely, securely private. And so while he can hear the regret and the frustration and the remorse in her voice, there's nothing he can say to assure her that he doesn't consider what they did to be the reason this happened.

"Kayo, listen—"

But there's nothing he can say, so he's not sure why he tries. He's spared from having to flounder for anything further by a familiar dual-toned chime, and the sudden, obnoxious arrival of his little brother in the comm channel.

" _So I heard some idiot dumbass dropped himself down a crevasse_."

That's about what Virgil was expecting. "Hi, Gordon."

"Hi yourself. I'll be down in a minute, dumbass, and then you and me are gonna have some _words_ , buddy. Now shut up and lemme work, I gotta figure out how the hell I'm getting you outta there. Kayo, you there?"

"Copy. I put down as close as John said I could, I'm about a kilometer away. I can't make a low enough pass to pick you up, you'll have to come to me. There's a sled in the kit I dropped."

"Fan _tastic_. So not only do I have to haul his dumb ass outta there, I also have to drag all two hundred pounds of him half a mile across a goddamn glacier. On my _birthday_."

Pretty much exactly what Virgil had expected.

What he doesn't expect is the low, warning growl from Kayo, and her answer, "Yeah, well, if _you_ hadn't decided to take an extra damn day off for your stupid birthday, then _you_ would've been along in the first place and this wouldn't even have _happened_. There's an interpretation of events where this is _your_ stupid fault, Gordon, so maybe shut up about the fact that you have to fix it, and just fucking _fix it_."

Hadn't expected that.

"Uh. FAB."

Apparently Gordon hadn't either.

"Call me when you're ready for extraction."

Three separate silences fall over the comm channel after that. It's been a long day, and longer for some of them than others. John's fond of reminding his brothers that any given day can be considered to have forty-eight hours. Technically it's not over yet, at least not in Greenland. It's still only 10PM, not quite the close of what's been a very fateful Valentine's Day.

He's had it disengaged up until now, but with Gordon's arrival, Virgil toggles his HUD back on. The visor on the front of his helmet illuminates softly from the inside. He'd turned it off because of the bright red, blinking alert from his exosuit, informing him that his hydraulics have seized and will require manual release. He knows that, but a big blinking alert in his face made the situation seem more dire than it really is. But he can ignore it long enough to figure out just where exactly Gordon and Kayo are.

His little brother is seventy-five feet up and about twenty feet back from the edge of the crevasse. Virgil can't see him, but he can see a holographic rendering of his silhouette, busily constructing an anchor point so he can rappel down a sheer wall of ice and come to the rescue. If he twists slightly against the confines of his exosuit (this is solidly wedged in between the walls of the crevasse and probably frozen in place by now), he can manage to crane his neck, and the AR in his HUD renders TB2's location at distance, relative to his position.

This'll all be over soon.

As if on cue, from up above, a long length of thick, sturdy nylon rope comes bouncing down the inside walls of the crevasse, unraveling neatly as it does so. Virgil watches it fall past him, twists against the makeshift cradle of his exosuit, to peer into the darkness of the abyss below—and feels just the slightest, _tiniest_ shift of his whole situation, some sort of structurally integral _something_ slipping slightly against the walls of the crevasse. It's barely noticeable—and he might not have noticed if he hadn't been holding more or less the exact same position for going on an hour and a half now—but it freezes him, immediately and completely. The sudden sensation of vertigo shoots his heart up into his throat so that he has to swallow it back down. A second line falls to join the first.

Virgil doesn't move again until he hears the sound of movement overhead. He moves as little as possible, just enough to watch his brother, a dark shadow against the starlit night overhead, as he descends down into the rift in the ice.

Boots crunch against the ice wall at his right shoulder, where the backpiece of his exosuit is pressed against the wall. His left leg, the probably-broken one, secured and reinforced by the braces on his legs, is caught against a protruding ledge of the opposite wall. Virgil's braced his right leg beside it and locked his hydraulics just for extra insurance, but things are starting to feel a little precarious.

One more little bounce off the wall, and abruptly he's no longer alone, halfway to the bottom of a crevasse in Greenland. Gordon's geared up a standard climbing rig for himself, expertly suspended himself right beside his brother, and the second line he's brought has a rescue harness attached.

Even if it's taken him an hour to get here and even if he's being an asshole about it, Virgil's immeasurably glad to see his little brother.

He sees Gordon sigh, and then he taps a fingertip lightly, twice, at the _IR_ embossed on the side of his helmet. With one foot braced against the wall, he leans over, reaches out to do the same for Virgil, linking them both over a shortwave radio channel, separate entirely from the comm link they share with Kayo, and completely inaccessible by John.

There are a few moments of silence, during which Gordon gives him a _look_ , and then pronounces, "You got a _helluva_ lotta nerve, V, nearly killing yourself on my birthday."

Virgil scoffs, "I didn't _nearly kill myself_ , I'm _fine_."

Gordon makes a vaguely all-encompassing gesture that seems to encapsulate the situation at hand. " _This_ does not look fine."

"I could be doing a hell of a lot worse."

"Mmhm, yeah, uh huh. And _I_ could be back in _Paris_ with _Penelope_ , boning up on my _French_. Instead I'm in _Greenland_. In a _crevasse_. With _you_."

From the way he's phrased it, Virgil doubts his little brother is talking about the language, per se. But it might be that he's not supposed to know about that part yet. He clears his throat awkwardly, and then falls silent while his brother works. Gordon flicks on a flashlight and starts to beam it around their immediate vicinity, brusque and businesslike, assessing. Briefly, he directs his attention to Virgil's exosuit, squints at the seized hydraulics and the way it's landed, wedged in the ice. "Where're you hurt?" he asks, after a few minutes of scrutiny. He swings the flashlight around and beams it directly at Virgil's face, like this is an interrogation. "And how bad?"

"Left leg, below the knee. Might've fractured the tibia. Uh, fibula? Can't remember. One of 'em, maybe both. Hurts like a _bitch_ , but you know about how I'm a stoic bastard. It's mostly been okay since it's immobile. But it'll suck when I have to move outta here. There might be some crying. There will _definitely_ be some swearing."

"Bud, you know I don't give a screaming blue fuck so long as there's no freaking out and flailing around. You make this difficult and I'm just gonna _drop_ your dumb ass." Gordon's returned his attention to the exosuit, and he makes the remark absently. This is not the sort of thing they usually get to say to rescue victims. But Virgil knows exactly the feeling, and knows better than to take it personally.

After a further few moments of assessment, Virgil makes another careful inquiry, "What's the verdict, doc?"

"Mm." Gordon's clipped his light to the line above his head, such that it illuminates the area around them in about a ten foot radius. He reaches out and gingerly raps the knuckles of a gloved hand against Virgil's chestplate. "I was gonna just attach a few lines to the hoist points on the thing, rather than try to pull you out of it—but it's _really_ goddamn stuck, and honestly I think the whole rig is toast anyhow. Seized up worse than Grandma the morning after a really intense bingo night. Two hundred pounds of _you_ is gonna be enough trouble without having to worry about another two hundred pounds of hydraulics. I think I'm gonna have to cut you out of it."

Brains is going to give him hell about that, as much as Brains ever gives anybody hell about anything. As a matter of entirely personal preference, it's going to be a shame to let this exosuit go. It's not like he doesn't have spares, but this one's got a solid year's worth of wear on it, and new ones take at least a few months to really break in. "Damn. D'you think—"

Gordon holds up a hand sharply, arresting any further suggestion. "Do _not_ make this more complicated than it needs to be, Virgil. You have _no_ idea where my brain would rather be right now."

That's _blatantly_ untrue and gives Virgil far too little credit. It's not exactly like it's hard to guess. He permits his brother a generous few moments to stew, as he continues to assess the exosuit. Then Virgil carefully makes a second attempt at a practical suggestion, "I was only gonna say, do you think it might be worth it to leave the left leg brace intact? It's probably as good or better than a splint would be."

Gordon just grunts in response. He's already detached a handheld plasma cutter from his toolbelt and he starts to make speculative little marks against the major points of articulation at Virgil's shoulders, his hips. Just quick little bursts of plasmic blue light, as he figures out where he'll need to make proper cuts, once he's got Virgil properly secured in a rescue harness.

"I mean, it's just a thought. You'd know better than me, you're the first aid guy."

"I am _not_ 'the first aid guy', I am a para-fucking- _medic_. You maybe wanna put a sock in it and lemme work, how 'bout? You stupid damn bastard?'"

Their grandmother is fond of saying that Gordon was born on Valentine's Day because he's such a sweetheart. Grandma Tracy is, unfortunately, a biased observer. Virgil obligingly shuts up, closes his eyes with a sigh and plays the model victim, docile and compliant, and _patient_ , more than anything else.

A few more minutes pass. With his eyes closed, it's possible he drifts off a little bit, more worn out than he'd like to admit by the whole ordeal. It occurs to him, not for the first time since this whole mess started, that he's going to be benched for the next four-to-six weeks. Virgil's going to get a vacation he doesn't actually _want_ , because he's going to wind up spending it in the midst of IR's day-to-day operations, watching everything fail to run _quite_ as smoothly as usual, because they'll be a man down. Gordon's going to have to step up to sub into TB2, with Alan or Kayo for backup. John's going to need to rotate everyone's schedules around, possibly going to need to rotate into missions himself. _Scott's_ going to pitch a fit about the whole state of affairs. It's all going to suck.

But Virgil's philosophy has always been to tackle one problem at a time. Right now, his current problem is his little brother's sullen silence. Silence isn't Gordon's natural state. It takes a concerted effort on Gordon's part to keep his mouth shut. Virgil opens one eye and peers at his brother, working intently with rope and rigging, threading nylon line through solid metal D-rings at weight bearing points of Virgil's harness. Gordon could tie half these knots in his sleep, and so Virgil isn't worried about breaking his brother's concentration as he hesitantly inquires, "…so…just exactly how badly did I fuck up your evening?"

Gordon's immediate answer is to give a hard, unsubtly angry _yank_ on the business end of the line he's used to tie an expert Tarbuck knot, the last point he needs to secure to the safety line before he can go to work with his plasma cutter.

"… _that_ bad, huh?"

Gordon manages a few more moments of stubborn silence, before this breaks with a heavy sigh. He fidgets and toys with the settings he needs to start to cut Virgil's exosuit apart. "D'you really wanna know?"

Virgil pulls his hand free of where it's been cradled in his exosuit for the past hour and a half. He reaches out, still cautious, and gives his brother a shove that sets him swinging slightly. "Man, of course I wanna know. C'mon, Gordon. Despite everything, this wasn't some grand and deliberate sabotage specifically engineered to fuck up your night with Lady P. I did a genuinely stupid thing and then I fell in a stupid hole. Shit happens. End of story. That's the sum total of how _my_ night's gone. So you might try and cheer me up, maybe. Maybe you didn't notice, but I'm _kinda_ pulling for you and her Ladyness, you dumb bastard. So how was Paris?"

There's a faint chuckle over the comm channel, and _that's_ more like it. There's the brother Virgil had been waiting for. "Fucked if _I_ know. I wasn't paying any attention to _Paris_."

Virgil grins. "How was _she_?"

This is a bit of a leading question, considering Virgil had seen her ladyship hours before Gordon had, and knows just _exactly_ how her ladyship was. Stunning, in a word. Lovely and lethal in a dress of blackest black, as unambiguous as her intentions in wearing it. It still takes Gordon a moment or two to answer, and there's an unmistakable note of longing in his voice when he finally does—

"She was _perfect_."

"Aww."

"Like, _literally_ goddamn perfect."

"That's sweet."

"I mean it."

"I know, man."

Gordon's been hanging in midair beside him, one foot braced against the icy wall at Virgil's right shoulder. He kicks off against this now, gets some distance, and leans back against his own harness, so that it catches at his hips as he flips himself upside down. He heaves another enormous sigh, apparently abandoning the task at hand in favour of having this conversation, and then swings himself back upright. "Wanna hear about a dumb thing _I_ did?"

Virgil's waited an hour and a half to get out of here. He can probably wait a little longer. "I mean, always. Sure. Hit me. What'd you do?"

"Told her I love her."

"Oh, _shit_." That wasn't what he meant to say. If he had to guess, " _I love you_ " probably wasn't something _Gordon_ had meant to say either. Virgil knows his little brother well enough to know that he has a tendency to blurt things out in moments of high emotion. Still, even for Gordon, this is—well. It's a little bit beyond the pale. "You didn't _really_ though."

"I kinda really did."

"Dude." Hanging in midair seventy-five feet below the icy surface of Greenland is the perfect place to be having this conversation. It's approximately that surreal.

Gordon just shakes his head again, self-recriminating this time. "I know, I know."

"How'd she take _that_?"

Gordon groans aloud before he answers. "She was fucking _lovely_. She…I mean, _Jesus_. Because, like, who the fuck _says that_ , right? Like, who just _says_ that. On a _first date_. I mean, _me_ , obviously, because _goddamn_ I am ever a stupid dumbfuck, V. Just a straight up stupid idiot goddamn _moron_. You know that better than just about anybody."

As hard as Gordon can be on other people, he's always been about a hundred times harder on himself. It's something he's got in common in Scott, though neither of them like to be told so. Virgil's always tried to be a gently moderating influence whenever the self-flagellation gets going in earnest. "Well—I mean, I wouldn't put it like that. Not in so many words. Obviously she didn't mind."

Gordon heaves another enormous sigh and catches his hands at the lines attached to either side of his harness, like he's a kid on a playground swing. "God, I hope not. I mean, I don't _think_ so…but…"

Virgil's still wedged in place like a kid stuffed in a locker. But clearly his little brother needs to get tonight's events off his chest. It's fine. He's starting to put together the pieces concerning just how bad his brother's attitude was, upon arrival. "Is that what I interrupted? Did you drop the L-bomb in the middle of the conversation and then—"

Gordon interrupts, "No. Uh, no. Nah, we, uh. We got past that part. Like I said, she was…lovely. She was just really, just _so_ —she's—I mean…so, I'm in love with her. I've _been_ in love with her. It's _Penelope_. Hell, it didn't even really _matter_ that I told her, because it's not like she didn't know that already. That's news to exactly _nobody_ , and _her_ least of all. Because she was just—good. She was really good about it. I think probably it's okay." And then, with an uncharacteristic shyness, barely restraining what might be actual absolute joy— "She said she liked it, even. That she liked me being in love with her. I _really_ wanna believe that's true. Maybe one day it'll go both ways."

That sounds nice. It sounds nice in a way that sends a pang of something weird and undefinable right through the heart of him, something that resonates down to his core. His HUD's still lit up over the inside of his visor, and when Virgil lifts his gaze to the upper corner of his field of vision, he can see the illuminated icon that means that Kayo's been listening to the entire exchange, in a separate channel, but still picking up the same audio from the local channel he and Gordon have been sharing. He doesn't doubt for a moment that she's heard every word. He wonders how she feels about it all. He knows he won't get the chance to ask. He doesn't know how or why he wants to tell her how _he_ feels about it, especially because he's not sure _what_ he feels, listening to his little brother talk explicitly and honestly about being in love and the hope of being loved in return.

It's probably not a thought he should try and wrangle with while wedged in the depths of a crevasse in Greenland. He should probably try and get himself unwedged from the depths of a crevasse in Greenland.

"I'm really happy for you, Gordon," he says instead, and means it.

"Thanks, Virg."

"Now, _please_ , get me the fuck outta here."

And Gordon laughs, and that's the surest sign possible that he's not really mad. Not anymore. "FAB, brother. One standard-issue rescue, comin' right up."


	19. co-pilot (reprise)

He's alone in the cockpit, taken over at the helm for the latter half of the flight home. Virgil's in little medbay in back, with his leg in a brace and a walloping dose of pain medication to tide him over until they get back to Tracy Island. As much fun as it can be to mess with his brothers while they're medicated, Gordon's really not in the mood, so instead Kayo's keeping an eye on him. Gordon's been trying to work up the nerve to try and call Penelope, except by now it's well past 4AM in Paris, and she's probably sleeping. Alone. In a big, luxurious penthouse bed, without him. Probably curled up with the rest of that bottle of champagne. Probably _deeply_ unsatisfied with the whole situation, though she'd been nothing less than lovely and perfect and completely understanding when he'd told her that he had to go, that Virgil had gotten himself wedged in a crevasse, and that Gordon had never been sorrier about anything in his whole entire life.

Especially because when he closes his eyes he can still see her, can call to mind every glorious detail of her perfect, beautiful body—except he _can't_ close his eyes, because he's supposed to be flying a stupid Thunderbird.

They're halfway home when Gordon's comm chimes, and he answers automatically, because he's thinking about Penny, and hoping against hope that she'd still be awake to call _him_. So he can tell her again how sorry he is, how he'll make it up to her as soon as humanly possible, just as soon as they see each other again. It's only been about four hours since he left her behind in Paris, and he already misses her badly enough that he aches at the thought of her, and would settle for just seeing her again, hearing her voice.

Except it's not Penelope, because it's Scott.

"Gordon."

"…Oh. Uh, hi."

Gordon hopes his sudden disappointment isn't obvious in his expression. He's been trying to get better about that, ever since Penny had made a comment—but it's hard. It's especially hard to be expecting Penelope and to get Scott instead, and not to express what a letdown _that_ is.

The last time Gordon talked to Scott was approximately twelve hours ago, as he brought TB1 down just long enough to let Gordon out onto the tarmac of the airport in Sydney. It feels like it's been ages. It feels like he's a whole new person since the last time he spoke to his brother, and maybe in some ways he is, because if nothing _else_ had come about in Paris (pun unintended), then at least now he knows for a definitive, actual _fact_ that he and Penelope are a _thing_ now. That wasn't exactly how she'd put it. _Official_. That had been her word. They're _official_. It's the sort of word that Gordon would ordinarily hate the sound of—but when _she'd_ said it, in _this_ context—yeah. He's coming right around to the word "official".

How exactly that transition is going to manifest for the rest of the family, Gordon's not quite sure. He knows Virgil's already on board. John too, probably, in his way. After a fashion. Maybe more definitely, once Gordon remembers to apologize for calling him a space-virgin. Alan won't care. Grandma _absolutely_ will. Kayo's currently too angry about the fact that today's mission had gone sideways to be worth engaging with, but he'll get to talk to her eventually. He's pretty sure she'll be happy for him, too.

And Scott—

Scott hasn't even bothered with hello. He's popped up on the forward console in hologram, just the same as ever. Scott is brusque and big brotherly and businesslike and he launches into the conversation without anything like preamble. "Welcome back. Hopefully you've gotten Paris out of your system. I suppose it was probably about time. And I hope Penelope let you down gently, because from what I hear about Virgil's status, it looks like you'll be subbing into TB2 for the next couple _months_ , at least. Probably good for you to have something keeping you busy. How is he?"

" _Uh_. Fine," Gordon answers automatically, though his brain feels like it's just been pancaked against a brick wall with the way Scott's started the converation. "Yeah…he's, uh, he's fine. Comfortable. I gave him a couple of the good drugs. Kayo's got an eye on him."

Scott nods. "Good. And good job pulling him out. I know cold weather stuff is hard on you, sometimes, but you always get past it."

"Right. Uh. Yeah, right…"

Gordon hasn't actually caught up sufficiently to acknowledge the praise, because it's taken a minute to parse what exactly his brother decided to open with. When it clicks, he's a little too dumbfounded to correct the assumption, as Scott goes rambling on, "We're lucky it wasn't worse, honestly. Just reminds you how razor thin our margins for error are, some days. I guess Kayo probably feels pretty bad, she's always pretty hard on herself about this kind of thing. How're _you_ holding up?"

Gordon's brain is still scrambling to figure out just how exactly Scott's managed to miss the obvoius connotations of a Valentine's Day date in _Paris_. And him. And Penelope. And him _and_ Penelope. He wonders just what exactly Scott _thought_ they were going to be getting up to, overnight in the aptly named City of Love. It seems as though Scott's made a big, broad assumption about what tonight was. It seems like Scott believes Penelope brought him to Paris _specifically_ to shoot him down and tell him to move on, and there's no way to conceive of that idea in a way that doesn't make it seem _spectacularly_ cruel. Gordon's reminded of just how narrowly his and Scott's lives actually intersect, that his eldest brother doesn't realize what's actually happened here.

"Gordon? You okay?"

He snaps back into the present and gives the answer Scott's expecting. "Yeah! I'm, um! I'm…good. I mean—I'm…I'm okay. Yeah, I'm fine. Uh. About tonight, though—I should've—"

Scott just shakes his head and Gordon trails off. "It doesn't matter. If you'd been along in the first place, there's no telling if it would've gone differently. Maybe it would've gone smoothly. Or maybe _you'd_ be in the bottom of a crevasse, and in worse shape than Virgil. But we'll handle it, anyway, we always do. We'll all take twenty-four hours—I mean, you'll take _another_ twenty-four hours—and then we'll assess where everybody's at as soon as everybody's got their feet back on the same ground. I'm gonna be stateside for about twelve hours, and then I'll be home. John should be heading down soon, too. We'll all get back to the island and we'll work it all out."

"…Right." Maybe that's better, actually. Maybe that'll be Gordon's best chance to make sure everybody's on the same page re: him and Penelope, and their burgeoning officialness. Officialism. Officiality. Scott seems like the only one who's missed the memo, not that there'd been a memo—and here and now and with bigger things to talk about, it just seems like the wrong time to bring it up. But it's fine. Gordon's not sure why he's so deeply reluctant to tell his eldest brother just where things _actually_ stand—and how wrong he'd been, with his stupid, snide comments about Penelope _humouring_ him—but it's _fine_. Like Scott said, they'll work it all out. Eventually. Later. Not now. "I guess I'll see you back at home."

Ignorant to Gordon's currently running internal monologue, Scott sketches a little salute. "Sure thing. I'll try and catch Kayo when I get back, I'm sure she needs a bit of a pep talk. This wasn't her fault. Tell Virgil to take it easy. Have a good rest of the flight. See you, Gordon."

And that's that. The call drops. And Gordon's left sitting at TB2's helm, dumbfounded, facing down a problem he didn't know he had.

He's spared from facing it any further by the sound of the medbay door opening behind him. He doesn't hear Kayo approaching at his back, because no one ever does. Stealthy or not, Gordon can still sense her presence, and when she drops into the co-pilot's seat beside him with nothing more than a huff of a sigh, he nods in acknowledgment. The most she's said since Gordon hit Greenland's airspace had been snapping at him about how this was probably his fault. So he's still cautiously trying to read her mood before he decides what to say.

Angry, but that's fading as remorse takes its place. Discouraged, dejected. Upset at having let someone down. In a new role and unsure about it. Worried about all the little mistakes that can add up to big failures.

Gordon wonders briefly if he might be projecting.

But then, he and Kayo have always gotten along pretty well and he's always been lucky enough to make up in emotional fluency what she has in emotional reserve. They're of an age, separated by only a few weeks. She's a Pisces to his Aquarius, though they have it in common that they'd both rather die than admit to the rest of the family that they ever so much as _glance_ at a horoscope.

(He probably should've checked his for today, but he'd been too anxious about the prospect of Mercury rising or Saturn in retrograde or some other nonsensical astrological bullshit that would've spelled out _disaster_ for his date with Penelope, and the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that might result.)

(In retrospect, he probably should've checked Virgil's.)

But the non-existent influence of the zodiac entirely aside, if Scott had been wrong about everything else, he'd been right about the fact that Kayo's incredibly hard on herself, and that she's probably beating herself up about the way things went and about what's going to happen as a consequence. Just the same way Gordon is.

So he clears his throat and cautiously breaks the ice, "…sooooo…wanna drop Scotty in a volcano for _your_ birthday?"

His interim co-pilot just scoffs under her breath and slumps further in her seat, but Gordon's got an inside track with Kayo. Not unlike his _usual_ co-pilot, Kayo and Gordon have always had something of a connection. Same as Alan and John or Scott and Virgil. It's funny the ways they all overlap, duos and trios that have come and gone over the years. He's pretty sure he can turn her mood around. And lucky that what cheers _him_ up when he's feeling down is the opportunity to cheer _other_ people up.

Scott's gonna go about this the wrong way, too. He'll be all brotherly platitudes and pep-talks, and well-intended bonhomie. _Esprit de corps_ , or whatever the fuck. This isn't what Kayo wants or needs out of the situation. She needs to bitch about what went wrong until she feels better, and Scott reliably tries to stifle even well-entitled bitching.

"Well, I'm already trying to figure out how I wanna fuck up V-Card's birthday. I think I'm gonna cram myself into some kinda fissure. Not sure yet. Gonna be at _least_ ten thousand feet under water, though, that's for goddamn sure. See him figure _that_ one out."

That gets another soft huff of breath and a roll of Kayo's eyes, which is progress, even if it's sarcastic progress. "Yeah, that's _exactly_ why that happened. Because it was your _birthday_."

There's an undercurrent of sincerity there, a sharp reminder of the way she blames him, and the way she hadn't been afraid to tell him so. That's another thing Scott had been right about—Gordon's not really in the mood to give his brother this much credit, but it doesn't change the truth—there's no point in looking at it that way, when the factors that led to a fuck up aren't obvious. Unless there's a crystal clear reason why shit went sideways, it does no good to lay blame. So Gordon doesn't take this personally, and ignores the acid in Kayo's tone as he continues, "I kinda wanna drop Scotty in a volcano right now."

"Scott hasn't done anything."

Gordon chuckles darkly to himself. " _Well_. I just got off the comm with Scott and he's currently under the impression that Pen brought me to Paris _specifically_ to tell me we would never work out. _So_. Kinda not Scooter's biggest fan right now."

Kayo would never cop to having an Achilles heel, especially not one as profoundly mundane as _gossip_. Gordon sometimes wonders whether her work is what fuels her interests in other people's secrets, or whether her interest in other people's secrets is the reason she went into this particular line of work. But her posture shifts, just slightly, and she arches an eyebrow. "He didn't _really_ ," she challenges, appropriately skeptical.

"He _super_ did. Hell, it was the main commline, it's all on record, you can play it back if you want."

"What did you tell him?"

This is all _much_ better already. This is exactly how him and Kayo always talk, when no one else is around. Working out in the gym or down on the beach for a run, or just keeping each other company in whatever weird overlap of their schedules happens to result. And it's working. It's helpful to talk about this, like a practice run, before he has to talk about it with Penny. "I had _no fucking idea_ what to tell him. Like—it just kinda blindsided me? You know? Because I thought…I thought it was kinda obvious where all this was going. Me and Penny. Valentine's Day. _Paris_. It was all kinda on purpose, you know? I didn't think there was much room for ambiguity."

Kayo rewards his honesty with a considered nod. "So you guys are a _thing_ now. You and Penny."

It's the first time she's said it, and Gordon's a little bit caught off guard by the little thrill of pleasure that results from hearing her acknowledge it, and so he lets Kayo in on a secret that's not really a secret, "I mean, we've _been_ a thing. You know? I told you I kissed her—but it wasn't just that. I call her every night. We've kinda kept it on the down low, because why rock the boat and whatever—but this has all been _ongoing_. We're just _official_ now."

That earns a snort of laughter, though you'd have to know Kayo pretty well to be able to tell it apart from derision. " _Official_. What does that even mean?"

Gordon shrugs. "Dunno. Her word, not mine. I just liked the way she said it. I guess it means now we tell people. I dunno who the hell needs to be told. I mean—Scott's clueless, obviously. But John knows. I think John might even _care_ , which is fifty shades of weird. And I guess I told Virgil. And you, obviously. You knew _first_."

Now there's a shadow of a smile, and that's how he can tell that they're back on solid ground, that Kayo's mood is starting to improve. "I guess I did, didn't I? Didn't know anything was actually gonna _come_ of it, though."

"No pun intended," Gordon responds automatically, absently, without entirely parsing what he's just said. His brain takes a second to cycle back around to the secondary meaning, and he feels the sudden flush of unexpected embarrassment, about something he might not have meant to admit to. Suddenly he needs to pay very close attention to flying, as he stammers, " _Uh_! I mean! Not— _fuck_. Not… _not_ …that." He's pretty sure the tips of his ears have gone bright red, and he fixes his gaze out the forward window, as though there's anything to see but clouds. "Forget I said that," he concludes, rather lamely.

But the objection sounds feeble even as he says it, and it's too late. What had been a shadow of a smile suddenly breaks into a proper grin, accompanied by a laugh with a slightly evil edge to it. Kayo shoots him a _look_ across the cockpit, suddenly smug, as she declares, "I _knew it_."

Gordon didn't know that. "You _what_ now?"

"Hope it was worth it." Kayo just chuckles to herself, and unfolds herself from the co-pilot's seat, leans back and puts her feet up on the forward console. TB2 doesn't have ejector seats, but Virgil still threatens Gordon with their use any time he so much as attempts this. "You ruined _my_ night too, you know," she tells him, ostensibly changing gears and mercifully changing the subject. "I'm pretty sure _you_ wouldn't have dropped your brother down a crevasse."

Gordon's grateful for the change of subject, though he doesn't agree with her premise, and primly tells her so, "I think there's no way to know."

"I think I'll tell you how it _really_ happened, if you tell me _everything_ about your night with Penelope."

And it occurs to Gordon suddenly that he might just have the opposite of the problem he has with Scott.

He doesn't know how to solve this one either.


	20. lover (reprise)

Her comm rings softly, right in her ear, because she's rested it on the pillow beside her head. Not that she'd necessarily _expected_ him to call, but because she'd hoped he might. She's fallen asleep in the time since he'd left, because it's been a very long day, and there hadn't been much else to do at the very disappointing end to it—but still. She'd hoped he would call.

Penelope's a famously light sleeper. In her particular line of work, this is almost an essential skill. When something wakes her, she wakes immediately and completely, snaps back to awareness as quickly as possible.

Usually, anyway. But then, _usually_ she hasn't polished an entire bottle of champagne all by herself, glass after dizzying glass, all alone in the big, satin sheeted bed in the penthouse's master bedroom, flipping through French TV channels and failing to find anything worth watching. It hadn't really helped. All it had done was made her sleepy, and at half past three, she'd yawned to herself, curled up next to her comm, and fallen asleep, hoping to soften her disappointment with dreams of what hadn't been.

She still feels a little hazy as that two-toned chime rings in her ear, rouses her from sleep—but not so hazy that she doesn't realize who'd be calling her at this hour. Penelope rolls over, fumbling slightly with her compact, and then muscle memory kicks in as she flips it open, the pale blue glow illuminating her immediate surroundings, shimmering lightly off gleaming ivory satin. The air in the room is pleasantly cool, and she's buried herself beenath the sheets and blankets, though if she moves too far from where she's curled up, the sheets grow cool again. She shivers as one of her feet strays too far from her little nest of warmth, and tires not to think of how deliciously warm Gordon would be beside her, even as his hologram materializes in miniature.

"Hello, darling," she says softly and smiles at him. She's not sure why she lowers her voice, there's no one else here to disturb.

Atypically, he doesn't smile back, and instead gives a little sigh and a grimace. "Aw, Pen, I was just gonna leave a message. I didn't wanna wake you."

"But I hoped you would, and then you did." She rubs the sleep from her eyes to get a better look at him, and yawns. He'd buttoned his shirt back up, pulled his jacket back on, and left without tying his shoes, muttering uncharitable things about the spare uniform he had stashed aboard Tracy-One. But he's not in uniform now, just a loose sleeveless shirt, which proclaims that the sleeves have fallen off due to an incident of careless flexing. She's not sure how long it's been since he left her, though it's still dark outside, the Parisian skyline glimmering through her window. Enough time for him to be back on Tracy Island, though she still asks, "Are you home safe? Is Virgil all right?"

He nods, and from the way he's positioned in hologram, she call tell that he's lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, probably with his comm sitting at the end of his bed. "Yeah. Virgil's okay. Broke his leg, but not too badly. Just a fracture. Little bit of shock, maybe, but he'll bounce back. Brains thinks he'll be in a walking cast in about four weeks or so—some PT and some time off and he'll be right back to normal."

"I'm glad."

This gets a wry twist of Gordon's expression. "I guess I am, too. Just wish I hadn't had to ruin your Valentine's Day."

"You didn't." Penelope had been expecting this, more or less. She's already seen it once tonight, just how hard Gordon can be on himself when things don't work out the way he thinks they should. She's appropriately gentle as she reassures him, "It's all right that you had to go."

But _that_ just gets an enormous sigh and a disconsolate shake of his head. "It's _really_ not, and I'm really, _really_ sorry. I just, I can't _believe_ —" he breaks off, drops his face to the mattress to stifle a visceral, compulsive sort of groan, pure disappointment. "The _timing_ ," he laments, though with his face against the duvet, this lamentation is somewhat muffled.

"You don't need to be sorry." Penelope wants to reach through the hologram and ruffle his freshly washed curls, even as she goes on, soothing, "We'll see each other again. We'll find another time."

"Will we?" He lifts his face again, plainly dismayed. "I'm gonna be…god, Penny, I'm gonna be _so_ goddamn busy for the next couple months. Stupid _Virgil_. We _need_ him, TB2's a _linchpin_. Don't tell anybody, but my dumb brother and Thunderbird 2 are _kind of_ the glue that holds this whole stupid outfit together. Now _I've_ gotta step up, and be the guy who's gotta be ready to fly that big damn bathtub at any given goddamn hour of the goddamn day, and it's gonna _suck_."

"Darling," Penelope murmurs, sympathetic. Her hand smooths reflexively over the coolness of the bedsheets beside her, and she wishes he were there. But if he were, then they wouldn't be having this conversation, and she wouldn't have to reassure him that his sudden absence is only a setback, and not the disaster he seems to think it is.

He sighs and shakes his head again, drops it onto his hands, dejected. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she protests again. "Gordon, please, don't be. I do understand. It's not as though—I mean, _really_. I _do_ know a thing or two about the demands International Rescue rises to meet. I've got something of an inside track. It's not as though it's anything like a shock that you'll be busy, it's not as though I don't appreciate the need. We'll sort it out, dearest. I promise there'll be another time. And tonight was lovely, even if abbreviated. I think we've made our point, if nothing else, and I can only imagine it should be easier from now on."

"You think?"

"I'm quite sure," she answers firmly, very decisive about the whole prospect. "After all, there's no further need to be so clandestine about the whole thing. We can simply make it clear that we're going to find ways to accomodate one another, in and around whatever International Rescue's schedule demands. We're in a relationship. This is the part where we start acting like it. You and I."

"Me and you," he echoes, and she thinks she can hear the disappointment waning from his voice, warmth taking its place. "I like that."

"So do I." Penelope senses him cheering up, drawn to the prospect of his happiness like a hound with a scent. And she's not above a little shameless flattery. "We're rather good together, aren't we?"

He grins—beams, really. "I like us."

Penelope continues blithely, "We're going to have to figure out where exactly we first want to be _seen_ together, officially. Do you have a favourite charity, darling? Anyone in need of several million dollars worth of money so old you'll have to blow the dust off it? I'll throw a benefit gala in London. Those are always such tremendous fun. And you and I can host, and it'll be all over the tabloids within the hour."

"Oh _boy_. TI's PR department's gonna just _love_ that."

Penelope couldn't care in the _slightest_ about what Tracy Industries' PR department will or will not love. "It's not official until it's tabloid official, darling."

He laughs, presumably delighted by the prospect. "Pics or it didn't happen?"

"Quite. But it's perfectly all right, my darling, because I know _my_ angles and I know _your_ angles, and I'll make quite sure we look just _splendid_ together. Whatever rag we wind up on the front of, the point is, we'll be on the front of it together."

"Aww. Well, you know I'm down. And hey! Maybe photographic proof'd be enough to make Scotty believe I actually have a shot with you."

Penelope's developed a bit of a frosty attitude towards Scott, ever since she'd caught wind of his comment about her 'humouring' Gordon. She feels her surface icing over, even as she asks, "…Oh? And just what exactly do you mean by that?"

"Uh…I dunno." Gordon shrugs, apparently uncomfortable with the prospect of tattling on his brother, now that he's drawn the razor's edge of Penelope's attention, playing sharply over something _else_ Scott had said. He hedges, "I mean, it's just whatever, right? It's no big deal."

"Did he say something? What did he say?"

"I mean! Like, this one's on me, probably, 'cuz I could've corrected him and I just—I didn't. I could've set him straight, and I just did not do that. I guess I dunno why I didn't. I should've, maybe. But I just—I dunno. There wasn't any good reason _not to_ , really, except for how the timing seemed—"

"Gordon. Tell me what he said."

It's an important piece of information to note about Gordon that she can pull him up short with a simple, sharp command. She hasn't even been especially stern, she's just cut him off, given him a direct order. And it has the desired result, because Gordon stops fumbling, and answers the question. "He just said that he hoped that you'd let me down gently. Like…like, I guess he figured what _I_ figured, originally—that you were just gonna shoot me down. That we weren't ever gonna work. Except now we're _working_ and—uh. I guess he just didn't pick up on that."

Penelope feels a proper scowl creep over her features, a narrowing of her eyes and a tic in her jaw. " _Ass._ "

Gordon winces a little bit at the sharpness in her town. "Aww, well—"

"Would you like to know something about your brother, darling? About why he's being such an utter and absolute _bastard_ about this?"

That silences him sharply, suddenly. It brings suspicion into his eyes where the warmth had been, and she doesn't know if she likes _that_ —but she's also decided that this is something Gordon should know, if Scott's going to continue to needle at him about this. If Scott _insists_ on being deliberately obtuse about the whole situation. Gordon sounds appropriately cautious as he says, "I, uh. I guess didn't know there was a reason? I figured it was just Scott being Scott."

Penelope shakes her head. "It's perhaps less to do you with you, darling, and more to do with me. It's ages ago now; back when I was first contracted to work with IR. When your father contacted _my_ father, and made an inquiry about my services, such as they are. So to speak. He need someone to liaise with the rest of the world on IR's behalf, and I was fresh out of Oxford and keen for something to do with myself. Someone started throwing the term _London Agent_ around, not that that's ever particularly _meant_ anything."

There's a flicker of a grin at that, and Gordon can't seem to resist making a comment, "Oh, I dunno, I always thought it sounded sexy as all hell."

This may very well be true, but it's beside the point at the moment. Penelope waves a hand, dismissive. "Irrelevant. What's _relevant_ is that your eldest brother made a _very_ overt move, _very_ early on in our acquaintance. I was twenty-two and he was twenty- _six_ , and the first thing he asked me when we had a moment alone together was whether or not I might like to go get a drink sometime."

Tiny and half the world away, Gordon stares at her, wide-eyed and just shy of scandalized. " _Scott_ did that? Scott and you? You and _Scott_?"

" _No_." She has to be quick and decisive to steady that particular little tremor of anxiety. "Nothing ever came of it, darling. I turned him down flat, because frankly I'd never been so offended in my _life_. You must understand, I had _just_ signed on with your father, and this was my very first introduction to his eldest son. This was the impression he decided to make. _I'd_ formed the impression that I would be taken seriously as a partner in this venture, and the first thing he did was try and pick me up. You can imagine, I didn't take that well. So I told him—and _not_ kindly—that I had zero interest in carrying on with anyone I was meant to work with and that I resented his lack of professionalism. He apologized—sincerely, even, which was more than I expected and went a long way towards mending my rather damaged opinion of him—and from then on it was all very cordial."

Even in hologram, he looks a little pale and still wide-eyed, despite the fact that he's hearing the story secondhand, and five years after the fact. "…If you'd done that to me, I think I might've actually _died_."

 _If I'd done that to you, I'd have broken your heart._ The thought crosses Penelope's mind at the same moment a gentle smile crosses her lips. "But I didn't, dearest. And I had no reason to. There's a _world_ of difference between Scott dropping some inane little pickup line on me when we'd known one another for no better than five minutes, and _you_ , having the nerve to tell me how you felt after an entire five _years_."

For as forthright as Gordon usually is about his feelings, this seems to embarrass him slightly, makes him rub bashfully at the back of his neck as he shrugs. "…Yeah. Well, I mean—yeah. I guess I did that."

"I guess you did." Penelope's shifted in bed, leaned back against the mound of pillows that border up against the headboard. She's drawn her knees up beneath the bedsheets, and now she cradles her compact in her lap, a cozy little oasis of gentle blue light. "I'm glad you did," she adds softly, entirely sincere.

That gets a proper smile. "Me too."

And this brings her back to her point, now that he's cheered up again—now that she's blunted the edge of Scott's occasional thoughtless condescension. "My _point_ is, I think Scott holds up that one initial interaction as grounds for the premise that I wouldn't _ever_ consider getting…involved, with any single member of International Rescue. As far as Scott and I were concerned, that boundary had been set, and functionally clad in iron. I suppose he must have thought it was universal. But time went on, and if possibly I might have privately made my way through the mental exercise of your family's roster—"

It's possible she was trying to slip this statement past him. It's not possible that it ever would've made it, and he cuts her off, alarmed," _Whoa_. No no no no no— _wait_. Wait. Made your _what_ through our _who_ now? What? Pen? What?"

Now she giggles, teasing. "I had the most ridiculous crush on John for just _ages_."

If he'd been threatened at all by the mere mention of Scott, the same isn't remotely true about John, because Gordon just scoffs at that, immediately derisive. "John's allergic to crushes, he breaks out in a rash."

"He must have had a very itchy 2057, then. He _is_ just absolutely _gorgeous_ , your brother. Really, he's wasted in orbit, he ought to be on a runway somewhere. But of course, once I got to know him—"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure under sexual preference, John crosses out the listed options and writes in 'no, thank you'. John's bi, but only if the binary in question is 'space and computers', because you know you can't ask him to choose."

Penelope smiles fondly and wonders if she'll ever tell Gordon that the first thing she'd done after kissing him for the first time was to go stumbling into his elder brother's room, desperate for advice and reassurance. "He makes for a tremendously good friend, though. I've always liked John."

"He's a good guy to have in your corner." There's a beat, and then with a slightly self-conscious note of remorse, Gordon admits, "I _probably_ shouldn't have called him a waifish space-virgin. Not to his face, anyway."

"Definitely" is the word he's actually looking for and Penelope gives a little gasp, offended on her friend's behalf. "Gordon!"

"Well, he _is_!"

She sighs, feigning exasperation. "Don't be mean to your poor brother."

"You think _that's_ mean? I really, _legitimately_ considered leaving Virgil stuck in a glacier. Still kinda wish I had."

" _Gordon_."

"He was fine! He could've hung out for, like—I dunno, another hour. Half an hour. Twenty minutes. Ten. I don't know, don't make me pare it down. People are always waiting around for us to rescue 'em. Would've been a good experience. Character building. He was _fine_."

"Gordon, _really_."

"Virgil's _very_ tough. I popped him outta there and he, like, _barely_ even cried at all. I could've left him."

"That would've been _extremely_ mean."

Usually a light scolding will pull him up short, but Gordon gets rather indignant about this one. "I am the fourth outta five, it is my _prerogative_ to be mean to my brothers. It is my _mission_ in life. You're an only child, babe, you don't know about these things. Trust me. Somebody has to keep 'em humble."

"And just who exactly keeps _you_ humble?"

" _Well_. Scott's half a foot taller than I am. John's got a PhD. Virgil benches 240. And my own single solitary little brother is a better pilot in his _sleep_ than I am after eight _years_. I am shorter, dumber, weaker, and worse at flying than all four of my brothers in combination. So, y'know, I'm not doing _too_ bad on the humility front, actually."

There's a fine line between humility and insecurity, and Penelope's beginning to get the idea that Gordon walks it like a tightrope. This is something she isn't going to tolerate, and retaliates promptly, "Except you're sweeter than Scott, more sensible than John, cuter than Virgil, and if admittedly Alan's the best pilot I think I've ever met, at least you're still taller than he is. And all of that _entirely_ aside, you've got the prettiest girlfriend by a _substantial_ margin."

He lights up at that, just absolutely _beams_ , and Penelope feels a familiar, joyful warmth rising in her chest. Even ten thousand miles distant and cast in cool, holographic blue, he's got a smile just exactly like sunshine and she basks in it. "My girlfriend is goddamn _gorgeous_."

Penelope smiles, as though she hasn't just fed him a compliment to pay right back to her, but any further banter is suddenly devoured by an unexpected yawn and a sudden wave of sleepiness. For just a moment she catches a glimpse of his expression through drowsy eyes, and has the impression that he thinks this is just about the most endearing thing in the world. _Good._

"Aww, honey, I'm gonna let you get back to sleep. I better go check on Virgil anyhow."

"If you _really_ feel you must."

"I should. I mean, I've been kidding around about it, but he _did_ break his leg and he _was_ stuck in a crevasse for nearly three hours, and he's a pretty tough bastard, but really not as tough as he pretends to be. I'm gonna go see how he's doing. You should sleep, Pen."

Far away, in Paris, Penelope squints past the little blue island of light in the middle of her bed, and for the first time notices the blue light of earliest morning beginning to creep into her bedroom. He's probably right. She's expected back in London early tomorrow afternoon. She's going to need to start looking for excuses to make her way to the other side of the world. "Wait, though," she protests, because usually he's the one to fall asleep on _her_ , usually their conversations dwindle and taper off, as he dozes off mid-ramble and she gets to whisper a soft good night before she ends the call. This is different. "There's something I want from you."

He's immediately obliging, as she suspects he always will be. "Anything."

Snuggling tighter beneath the blankets, Penelope cradles her compact in both hands. "There was something you felt you shouldn't have said to me."

"Oh. Umm…"

But before he can descend back into bluster and apology and the certainty that it was a mistake, she tells him, "Say it again."

It takes him a moment, but he _did_ say " _anything_ ", though there's a moment's hesitation before he complies— "I love you."

"Mmm. And I like that." It's a soft, considered little hum of pleasure, genuine enjoyment of the way it makes her feel. She could get used to it being the last thing she hears every night. "Good night, dearest."

"Good night, Pen."


	21. interlude: valentine (reprise)

_**a/n:** in a rare move, posting this chapter to ffnet before i post to Ao3, because this chapter has art that goes with it, but it's not done yet, but seeing as the associated art won't get posted to ffnet anyhow, I figured I'd get myself a little bit ahead of schedule. Anyway. Thanks for reading!_

* * *

He makes it with about fifteen minutes to spare and brings TB1 in for a gentle, gossamer landing. Scott's always careful when bringing TB1 in for a landing—but landing her _here_ , he's maybe more careful than usual.

A warning label tacked up in the forward part of his cockpit reminds him to do his post-flights, and with only fifteen minutes to spare, he ignores it. There'll be time for that later. His post-flights today can be his pre-flights tomorrow. For now, he's late.

The Andes are hours behind him, the team of climbers he'd rescued are safely back on the ground and in the hands of medical professionals. He hadn't stuck around for the tearful thank yous, the weeping and the crying and the undying, unparalleled gratitude of people who owe him their lives. Scott's owed so many lives by this point that some of the shine's gone off. A day when someone swears to name their firstborn after him is no more remarkable than your average Thursday. He wonders how many people actually followed through on that one, how many little Scotts he's got trailing around the world behind him. Something about the thought is somehow deeply uncomfortable, and so he's pretty sure he prefers not to know.

It's not a Thursday, anyway.

It's another day entirely, and so Scott's signed off for the night, gone off rotation and onto his own time. He's off, the same way Gordon had been off, with instructions that he's not to be disturbed. Unless it's a question of life and limb, John reliably takes that instruction seriously. Scott's taken TB1 and flown northward, cutting a straight, surefire shot to his destination, his course as short as possible and his engines pushing their top speed.

And now he's here, and clambering down out of the cockpit into night air that's cold, but not as cold as it would be elsewhere. Probably hovering right around freezing, as close to midnight as it is—and it's only minutes to midnight. He'd snagged his helmet on his way out of the cockpit, and now it hangs from its usual place at his hip, bounces slightly as he jogs away from where he'd put his Thunderbird down, on a grassy lawn that hasn't been mowed since late last fall, and won't need to be mowed again until spring sets in properly. Scott's the only one who still comes here on a regular basis, and he's usually pretty on top of it.

The farmhouse is the same as ever, same as it is whenever he's here. The familiarity pulls at him like magnetism, draws him inexorably up a path he's been walking for three decades. There's coming home and then there's coming _Home_.

Home for Scott is home at its most idiomatic. Home is where he hangs his hat (or his helmet), home is where the heart is. Home is not a castle, but a two storey farmhouse with a red tin roof and a wraparound porch, that shoulders up out of the surrounding prairies, big and white beneath the starlight, the same way the bare fields all around are bleached of all colour by the night sky. The roof is gabled at all four corners, four black-shuttered windows face the cardinal directions. The one above the front porch faces southward, and stares down at him as he makes his way up the front walk, like an unblinking eye, accusing. He's late and he knows it. Home seems to know it, too.

The farmhouse is dark as he trips lightly up the front steps of the porch, thumping a fist on the worn post of the banister at the bottom out of habit. There's no key under the welcome mat, though there _is_ a welcome mat, the C and the O worn almost through to the floorboards. The key is on Scott's keychain, hastily retrieved from where he'd stashed it in his sash. Where it's been waiting, this whole night and most of today, for him to be able to break off and get away. To come _home_ , the way he's needed to for what feels like ages.

He unlocks the door, knows from long habit that he needs to keep his hand on the doorknob and lift and turn just-so, otherwise the key will get stuck in the lock and the tumblers will stubbornly refuse to turn. Shutting him out, despite the fact that this is where Scott grew up. He's been coming here for the past thirty-one years of his life and has as much right as anybody to open this door.

But it's a long practiced motion, and the lock turns, and he opens the door into darkness, into a small foyer between a little powder room and the front hall closet. There are stairs to his left, up to the four bedrooms that nestle beneath the gabled roof, one for each window; North, South, East and West. Growing up, he and John shared the coveted western room, spared from the light of early morning dawn, and with the loose screen on the window that could be pried up so that a pair of skinny adolescent boys could slip out, to sit on the roof and watch the stars overhead, indifferent to mosquito bites or early mornings, just talking.

But Scott's come here without any of his family, tonight.

It's late and the house is dark. The floorboards creak beneath his feet as he proceeds through the front hallway. The hallway opens with the kitchen to his right, pale blonde cabinetry wrapped around a breakfast bar. The dining room is just beyond, a whitewashed trestle table, a hulking wooden thing that his grandfather had built, big enough that it had sat all nine members of their family at its largest—Grandma and Grandpa Tracy, Mom and Dad, Scott and his brothers.

None of them are here now.

The dining room opens up to the living room, wrapped all around with big wide windows with their broad, beautiful view; facing the fields that roll gently beyond the backyard, outward until they run into the wooded break of the treeline that separates the Tracy family's farm from the farm beside it, though the fields immediately around the farmhouse have lain fallow for years now, and those that have been bought up around them are farmed by roving agricultural drones. In the daylight they're a sight to behold, gleaming dark green and gold, John Deere's legacy

As he crosses the room, Scott idly drops his helmet onto the dining room table, where it thuds off the wood and rolls onto its face. "Honey, I'm home," he calls softly into the living room, and after a few moments he's rewarded by a shifting sound from the overstuffed living room couch.

A hand reaches up over the back of it and he gets a vague wave. She's wearing one of his shirts, pilfered from the upstairs dresser, and the sleeve of this drops back from her wrist to her elbow as she greets him, unceremoniously, "You're _very_ late."

Scott feels a twist of guilt through his gut, though he knows by now that she doesn't hold it against him, and that she never will. It doesn't mean he isn't sorry. "I know."

" _Late_ isn't really your thing."

He glances at his wristcomm, which tells him that he's still made it under the wire, and it's still February 14th, 2062—for another twelve minutes. "I got here as soon as I could."

"I had the idea that that big rocket plane of yours could hit Mach 16 if it really wanted to."

He'd have been faster, but his fuel reserves hadn't been great, and there's still the trip home to think about. He's already needing to plan for a pitstop in Hawaii on the way back out over the Pacific, once his twelve hours of downtime are up. "Trust me, it _really_ wanted to. I planned to get here much sooner. Just—you know. Hard to plan around catastrophe. People need me sometimes. So I've gotta go."

" _Well_. Considering our history, you know I can't exactly hold _that_ against you." The hand that had reached up to wave at him over the back of the couch grasps the top of the cushions. There's a groan of effort and then the clatter of an empty bottle onto the hardwood floor, and then a stymied sigh. "But also I got _very_ impatient and drank my half of the six pack I brought _plus_ a shot of Jack. So you're going to need to come over here if you want a proper hello, because if I try'n get up I'll probably fall over."

Scott very much wants a proper hello, enough so that his long-legged stride takes him across the living room before he even consciously makes the decision. But then, he's a pilot. They both are. Reflexes like lightning are kind of a perk of the job, and he circles around to her side of the couch, an absolute slave to his instincts in the moment, and just shy of desperate for the sight of her.

She's retrieved one of his shirts, but apparently decided to forego any pants, and a pair of flowered cotton briefs peek out from beneath the hem of a blue chambray shirt, one of his favourites, worn soft over the course of its existence. This is unbuttoned over top of a whole lot of nothing at all, besides the bare skin of her breasts, hiding behind a pair of shirt pockets. There's no light in the room but the moonlight through the window, and her golden blonde hair has mostly disintegrated out of its usual messy bun. Scott doesn't take his eyes off her as he seats himself at the edge of the coffee table. There's a slight creak, but at age thirty-one and after a full day of flying, it's from his knees and not the furniture. Grandpa built this, too, and it survived the childhoods of five rambunctious boys, left more marks on them than they'd left on it. Virgil still has a scar above his eyebrow from bouncing his forehead off the corner when he was eight.

And she just lounges on the couch and stares up at him with a small, expectant smile, while he looks back down at her, taking in every glorious moonlit inch of the woman who'd waited for him.

"You're outta regs, Captain Carter," he comments softly, as though this is anything like a criticism.

She snorts at that, derisive, but at the same time she cocks one of her knees up, and before he knows it, he's running gloved fingertips up the curve of her thigh. This is just a reminder that he needs to take his gloves off, though the desire to touch her is more like a compulsion, and it takes everything he has to spare a moment to unbuckle his gauntlets as she retorts, "You're not my _commander_ , Captain Tracy. The Air Force doesn't seem like it left you with much in the way of punctuality."

"Hey, I got here. I told you I'd get here and I got here, so please give a guy some credit."

She pretends to check an imaginary watch, and then makes an uncannily accurate guess at the time, though it just proves that she hasn't really been keeping track, and that she doesn't _really_ care. She's just playing with him. "With a whole ten minutes to spare."

Scott knows _exactly_ when he touched down, because Scott tends to know things like that. "Pretty sure you'll find it was closer to fifteen."

She sits up slightly, just enough to reach over and pat his cheek, consoling. "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, honey."

"Shut up, Carter."

"Make me, Tracy."

His gloves land on the floor with a thud, his comm along with them, and at that, he deftly flicks the front of her (his) shirtfront open, baring a pair of pert, perfect breasts, which he appreciates for the requisite few moments, before his eyes flick upward to meet her green-eyed gaze again. "The Navy doesn't seem like it left you with much in the way of professional bearing."

"Then I guess it's a good thing I left the Navy."

His hand goes to her face now, where she's nestled down on the couch amongst the overstuffed pillows and soft muslin blankets that adorn the thing year round. "I don't think I'd know you if you hadn't," he says softly.

She just smirks, unfailingly coy whenever he musters up the nerve to try and come at her with sincerity, some miraculous way she has of teasing him, without making him doubt for even a moment that she still takes him seriously, and knows when he means what he says. "Wouldn't that be just the worst thing in the world?"

Scott smiles back, but only to cover for the fact that he has to swallow past the unexpected emotion that the very thought brings rising up from the heart of him. "Yeah. It really would." His hand finds hers, and he lifts this to press a kiss against her fingers, a gentleman's gesture, though it's extremely ungentlemanly to be six hours late for what was supposed to be a dinner date. "I'm sorry I made you wait."

She squints at him and lifts her chin slightly, challenging. "How sorry?"

"I nearly dropped an Argentinian off the side of a mountain because I was busy thinking about you, how's that for sorry?"

This gets a peal of laughter, and if there's a giggly, drunken edge to it, Scott doesn't mind. She's a fun, bubbly drunk, and he knows her better than to believe she's nearly as tipsy as she claims. She was a Navy pilot, after all. "D'you think he would've bounced?" she asks, still giggling.

"Probably not more than once."

A streak of morbidly dark humour is not something that International Rescue broadly advertises as a quality of its operatives, but it's a necessity of the job. They'd all have gone screaming out of their minds long ago if they didn't have a release of _some_ sort.

Of course, black humour is only one option. The aforementioned six-pack is sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, though the bottles are only cool to the touch, not cold. Still, he takes one and snaps the cap off, standing up, only to gently tap her kneecap and sit back down as she obligingly folds herself up onto one half of the couch. Scott drops onto the sofa beside her with a groan and a sigh, and immediately she stretches her long legs back out across his lap.

"Long day," she observes, as he sinks against the couch cushions with a wearied groan. "How long were you in the air?"

Scott takes a sip of beer that turns into a swig that drains half the bottle and leaves him sighing as he lowers it back to rest on his kneecap. "Actively flying, only about nine hours. Two hours out, three hours ferrying trapped climbers off the top of _Ojos del Salado_ , and then four hours to get out here. If the jetpack counts, then it was more like a full twelve."

"The jetpack _always_ counts, babe."

That's a more generous assessment of his flight hours than Scott usually gets, so he'll take it. "It's the mountainside stuff that shreds my nerves. Crosswinds versus TB1's autopilot versus the _Andes_ , and the fact that I have to jam rescue harnesses on a bunch of panicky, exhausted idiots who _knew_ they were climbing outta season, and got into the whole mess by their own damn fool doing."

"Stupid inconsiderate rescue victims."

"They're a _nightmare_ ," Scott laments in agreement, glossing over her sarcasm and finishing his beer. One isn't enough for him to really feel it, but there are two more to go, and he's heard a rumour about a bottle of Jack lurking around somewhere. If he starts now, he can be sober by morning. But in lieu of another bottle, he runs a hand down her calf, and his fingers find the arch of her foot, kneading lightly against the instep and absently starting to work upwards towards her toes. She's had a pedicure since the last time he saw her, and these are painted prettily pale lavender. "Would you believe me if I told you if mine wasn't actually the _worst_ day that got had today?"

"Well, _I_ sat by myself for six hours, waiting for my Valentine's Day dinner date, and _then_ I got drunk alone in the dark, _so_ …"

" _Hey_. I'm actively in the process of making that up to you." Scott tweaks her big toe and switches to her other foot. "I meant out of my family."

She shrugs. The way her body moves beneath his shirt is incredibly distracting. "Your family sets a pretty high bar for bad days. But it couldn't actually have been _that_ bad, or you wouldn't be here, and I'd be drinking the rest of my sixer and crying into my bottle of Jack."

He's never not going to love how smart she is, and how thoroughly and completely she sees through him. It's been two years, and sometimes he could swear she knows him better than people who've known him nearly his whole life. "Virgil fell into a crevasse and broke his leg."

She gasps a little at that, a sharp, sympathetic intake of breath. "Shit. Is he okay?"

"He'll be fine. Being without him is gonna make our lives absolute _hell_ for the next two months—but we've gotten through worse. Grandma ran things for two weeks when John had his appendix out, and nobody died. We muddle through."

"Still. Your heavy hitter broke his leg. That's a pretty bad day."

That's for damn sure. It's a bad day that's going to translate into a bad couple _months_ for International Rescue, but when it's important—when he's got his hands full of a woman's slender calves and is diligently working his way upward—Scott can compartmentalize pretty well. "Wasn't the worst one, though."

"Oh no. You're telling me John broke _both_ his legs?"

Scott scoffs. "If he ever did, I don't think he'd actually _say_ so, if it meant he had to come down out of orbit. Nah. It was Gordon, actually. Gordo's gotta've had just about the shittiest night I think I can imagine, the poor bastard."

"What happened to Gordon?"

That's the right way to put it. Scott sighs, shakes his head, and explains, "He took forty-eight hours off for his birthday…Valentine's Day. Went to Paris with Lady Penelope. Asked her out to dinner, and she agreed to go."

" _Ooh_."

There's an unmistakable note of intrigue there. Scott's aware that _one_ of the people in this room is more than a little obsessed with the Lady Penelope, and getting the inside scoop on the London socialite's love life would have an undeniable appeal. "Yeah, except she only would've gone so she could shut him down, clearly and definitively."

She gasps again, but this time it's sharp, genuinely scandalized. "She _wouldn't_. In _Paris_? On his _birthday_?"

"Pretty sure."

" _Bitch_."

He winces at the heat in her tone and hastily tries to modulate her opinion. "Well, no. I mean! She definitely _can_ be, but like—I don't think it's that. I think she's just being absolutely, one hundred percent sure she gets her point across. Grand gestures. WIth Gordon, it's go big or go home, otherwise he just doesn't _get it_. It's just…I mean, you've gotta know Penelope. And you've gotta know Gordon. He's had this completely hopeless crush on her for basically as long as he's known her, but he's kinda thick as mud about this kinda shit, like—he doesn't understand why nothing could ever come of it."

"Why not?"

Scott shakes his head. "Penelope doesn't get involved with people she works with, and she's right not to. She's always been _very_ clear about that."

She gives him a little nudge at that, bumps her knee against his chest. " _Right_. Same way _you_ don't get involved with any of those pesky rescue victims."

Two years is mostly long enough for Scott to be over the guilt that goes along with doing exactly that. Mostly. His hand has made his way up to the curve of her kneecap, his fingers linger over an old scar from an old knee surgery. It's a familiar landmark on this particular journey and the pad of his thumb runs over the thirteen spots where thirteen stitches pulled her smooth skin back together. "Well, it's not like that's _written down_ anywhere."

"I mean, you'd be the guy to write it."

"It's not down in _stone_. Nothing in the Big Book of Rescues says we _can't_ , strictly speaking."

"It's just a bad idea."

" _Such_ a bad idea," he agrees, as his fingers curve around the back of her thigh. He can feel the goosebumps on her skin. It's February, after all, and for all that it's been updated and modernized and lived in, in one capacity or another, for the duration of its hundred and fifty years of existence—it's still a drafty old farmhouse in the middle of the Kansas prairies. And the chill seeps in even as the warmth of his palms smooths over the coolness of her skin. "Worst idea I've ever had, probably."

"You're such an idiot." Now she reaches out, and her hand catches the top edge of the couch again as she pulls herself upright. Her weight shifts and the springs of the couch creak, and the next thing he knows, she's settled herself in his lap, straddling his waist, her knees pressed against his hips. "Why am I in love with such an idiot?"

"Hell if I know." She's taller than him, kneeling, but even standing flat on the floor, she's only a couple inches shorter than he is. And for now he looks up at her, in the moonlight that pours through the living room windows, and decides he doesn't need a second bottle of beer, or a third, or even the rumour of a bottle of Jack, lingering on her lips as she bows her face to kiss him. She's intoxicating all on her own, and when she kisses him, he can _feel_ it, coursing through every part of him.

She stops for just a moment, tilts her forehead against his as she takes a breath, releases it with a contented sigh. "Happy Valentine's Day, Scott," she murmurs, even as his hands pull insistently at her shirt; gentle, but impatient for all of her, for there to be nothing between them. Usually there are thousands of miles. He's not about to be foiled by a blue chambray shirt.

"Happy anniversary, Jane."

* * *

 **a/n again** : _Captain Jane Carter, S01 Episode 24 - Touch and Go._


	22. sunshine and rain

It's been two weeks since Paris, and she's only seen him _twice_.

Seen, of course, being employed in the literal and not the figurative sense of the term, because she's done nothing better than _see_ him. Twice. In the course of two weeks. And they'd actually spoken for less than half an hour each time, because on the first occasion he'd been called away, and on the second he'd been so tired as to be scarcely coherent and had fallen asleep after only ten minutes of vague conversation. The call had continued on for another hour after that, because she'd been lonely enough to leave her compact open on the pillow beside her, curled up drowsily in the midst of her own morning, listening to him snoring softly and missing him dreadfully.

International Rescue is busy and therefore Gordon is busy, and therefore Penelope is seeing a great deal less of him than usual. When she's grown accustomed to seeing him every day, or thereabouts, and the sudden absence is jarring.

And it's strange to think that it used to be the status quo, going for weeks, sometimes months at a time without seeing Gordon—though now she recalls how often he would go out of his way on the occasions when their lives did overlap, even just to say hello. With the fullness of context of just how deeply he cares for her and how long this has been true, these memories gain a melancholy cast, and make her rather maudlin about the thought of wasted time.

If she'd known just how much she was going to _want_ him, she would've wanted him far sooner than this, is the plain and simple truth of it all.

It's the tail end of winter in England, the fourth day of March, and it's almost as gray and stormy as her mood. Parker brings her tea in the library, and finds her seated at the window, actively _brooding_ as she stares out over the rolling swells of the rainsoaked grounds. She's dressed herself down for a rare, quiet week, having cleared her schedule in a fit of sullen ennui, bored of galas and charity dinners and fashionable occasions, sick and tired of attending these events oh-so-conspicuously alone, when she's newly possessed of the option not to be. She'd sent her regrets and whatever monetary donation felt appropriate as an apology in the case of the charities—and retreated into the depths of the manor. There's absolutely _nothing_ afoot in the world of international intrigue, and for as busy as International Rescue have been, they haven't had need of her. It's possible that Penelope is sulking, and it's probable that Parker can tell.

"Not like the h'weather to get you so down, m'lady," he comments mildly, as he lays out a tray of tea and biscuits—both her favourites, as though he's sensed her mood all the way from the kitchen, and adjusted the afternoon's offering accordingly. "Something h'amiss?"

Penelope manages to refrain from a disconsolae sigh as she shifts where she sits, curled up in a hulking leather chair in the corner of what was once her father's study. "Just feeling the need of some sunshine, Parker."

"This too shall pass, your ladyship." He drops a slice of lemon and a single sugar cube into her favourite teacup, before topping this up with Darjeeling, as she moves to the forward edge of her chair and reaches for a piece of delicate lavender shortbread, each perfect circle dusted with caster sugar, a dried pansy pressed into the top.

"Thank you."

"Of course, m'lady." Parker seats himself in the chair across from hers, settles himself down before reaching for his own mug of tea, brewed double strength and extra sweet. "What's got you so h'out of sorts, then?"

"I'm _tremendously_ bored."

Parker chuckles at her, gives her a bemused look from beneath bushy eyebrows. "Well, your ladyship might recall 'aving cleared the entire content of her social calendar for the rest of the week?"

Penelope shrugs helplessly and wolfs down her lavender cookie, reflecting that she really must ask the cook to start making them larger. At least three times larger. At present she feels the need to eat six of them in a row, and it would really feel much more reasonable to eat just two at thrice the size. In Parker's presence, she refrains, and switches to her cup of tea instead.

Something about her solitary afternoon has her feeling melancholy, introspective. She's uncharacteristically candid as she answers the question he'd asked in the first place. "It's just that sometimes I'm just so dreadfully _tired_ of it all, Parker. Sometimes I can't bear to go out into the world and to feel so utterly _false_. Smiling and nodding and making an _appearance_. I do so hate to feel as though I'm only valuable in so far as _showing up_ to a place. Places where people care more about what I've worn than what I've done—who I'm wearing rather than who I _am_."

"Now, _m'lady_ ," he chides immediately. Penelope's known Parker for almost her entire life, and he's never been one to put up with melodrama. In fairness, she doesn't often engage in melodrama. "None of that nonsense. You've always known your worth, h'and we _both_ know just how much of your h'image is your own very careful making. There's 'alf your life that needs the world to believe your naught better than a bubble 'eaded socialite with a collection of pet causes, and you've h'always played the role to _consummate_ perfection."

She smiles at this in spite of herself, a wry twist of a smile that recognizes the backhanded insult that's been built into the statement, from someone who plays dumb just as often and effectively as she does, despite being sharper than a razor and smarter than a whip himself, and who's been teasing her since her girlhood. "You're too kind," she answers, blandly sarcastic.

With a smirk of his own, Parker doffs an imaginary cap and then raises his mug in a cheeky little salute. "Just so, m'lady. P'rhaps next time you only cancel _half_ of your h'engagements."

 _Now_ she sighs, sets her tea aside so she can curl back up in her chosen leather chair. The whole room seems bound in leather, and because Penelope comes from properly old money, this is all real leather, from the binding of the books to the leather pad that covers the desk that was once her father's. The room is high and dark, but familiar and comforting, though she draws no comfort from it now. Instead she finds it tremendously stuffy. "I don't see what _you've_ got to complain about, you've been pottering around the garden for the past three days, happy as a clam at high tide. All _I've_ got to do is rattle around this dreadful old manor like a pea in a drum."

"A clam might've been glad of a pea's company, pottering h'around the garden," Parker remarks. "But then, you've never been fond of the rain and the wet." And Parker's never been one to tolerate complaining. "H'again, your ladyship, it was your very own doing. There was _plenty_ meant to be h'on this week. Some of it I thought you were h'even looking _forward_ to."

He's got her there. She's turned down her usual attendance at an annual charity gala, thrown by World Heritage, and this is usually one of the highlights of her year, and one of her very favourite ways in which she makes a difference in the world. But the very thought of World Heritage had put her in mind of Gordon, and of a long ago moment in the depths of a collapsing South American tomb, and a moment she should have known for just exactly what it was, then. It had been the spark that had incinerated her agenda for the upcoming week. She'd daydreamed idly that they might attend together, that she might cause a minor sensation by arriving on the arm of her young, handsome, reasonably anonymous new beau. The disappointment when that fantasy hadn't come true was enough to have her cancel her attendance entirely. "I just—I thought something more interesting might present itself."

"Such as?"

"Oh…I don't know, Parker…"

This is a lie. What she'd thought, hoping against hope, was that some contrivance of the universe around her might bring her back into Gordon's company. Even incidentally. Somewhere, for some reason, even just long enough to share a glance, to steal a moment together. Of course it wouldn't have been _enough_ —when what she _wants_ is the absolute totality of what she was denied in Paris—but it would be better than nothing. Penelope can't recall the last time she wanted anyone— _anything_ —as much as she finds herself wanting Gordon, lately. It's beginning to be unbearable, almost _inexpressible_ , and especially in present company.

Because it's quietly beginning to be troublesome, that she hasn't told Parker just where exactly she and Gordon stand. As far as Parker knows, things between them started and then ended in Paris—and they _did_ , but in a very different way than what he probably assumes. It's not that she's keeping it a secret, so much that she simply doesn't know how to express the truth.

For as much as the uniformed observer might assume that they're servant and mistress, bodyguard and principle, chauffeur and chaufferred—really, Parker is her partner and mentor, her guardian and her friend. He taught her everything her father hadn't, and between the twofold educations she's had from the two men who'd raised her, Penelope is a force to be reckoned with, and a daughter to Parker in all but name. There's nothing in the world he wouldn't do for her, and deep in her heart she knows he'd understand—but it doesn't make it any easier to broach the subject.

She skirts around it again instead, and floats a delicate suggestion, the beginnings of a scheme brewing in the back of her mind. She's been brooding in the library for hours now, after all. "I've been thinking I might try to find myself something new. Smaller. More private. I've felt the need of a fresh project, perhaps I can find something to put me in a sunnier part of the world for a while. Something that relies more upon what I _think_ rather than what I am."

"Could do, m'lady, could do," Parker agrees mildly, nodding along in the way he usually does, when he can tell that she wants his encouragement more than anything else. "What sort of project did you 'ave in mind then?"

She pauses, because this is the part that will require some finesse. " _Well_. To preface, I'll say that you mustn't judge this suggestion on the bare face of it, because really I think there's quite a lot of potential to the whole idea—"

"Oh 'eavens," Parker mutters behind the rim of his mug of tea, such that they both know she heard him, but both pretend otherwise. "Mm _hmm_?"

Penelope boldly forges on, undiscouraged, "I've been thinking about getting in touch with Langstrom Fischler out in Auckland, just to see what he's got brewing. Just, you know, to try and intervene in the matter of anything obviously harebrained before it can spiral into anything that our dearly beloved boys in blue need to handle. And to see if there's anything that could—with a little nurturing, with the presence of a moderating influence—become something worthwhile."

"Mm _hmm_." A pair of bright blue eyes peer at her from over the rim of a battered and chipped old mug. Parker has paused, quite deliberately, in the act of sipping his tea, to level an appraising stare in her direction. "Your ladyship will recall that the man has nearly gotten h'our boys _killed_ on more than one h'occasion? I can't imagine they'd h'approve of your association with the blaggard."

"What they may or may not approve of is rather secondary, to my mind." Penelope waves a hand, as though Parker's entirely missed the point she's making. She takes the opportunity to snag another cookie, and she nibbles this one delicately before she goes on. "I'm aware that there's some friction there. What _I'm_ saying is that perhaps an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of autonomous weather drones gone rogue. Dear Langstrom always _means_ well. He's just a bit—"

Penelope makes a vague gesture, and Parker obligingly supplies the correct pejorative. "Of a bloomin' bloody fool?"

"Well, I haven't said so."

Parker shakes his head. "I don't know, m'lady. Seems a bit…thin. H'especially compared to all the worthwhile h'endeavours that've gotten shrugged off this week h'already."

She's made him suspcious. The only thing to do is to continue to forge ahead, doubling down on the minor deceit of even the remotest interest in whatever cockamamie project Fischler Industries has brewing. "I've already explained about that."

This gets a considered nod, and Parker's tone softens as he agrees with her. "So you 'ave, m'lady, so you have. But then, you've got me wondering—is h'everything _really_ all right?"

And she could tell him, then, just what exactly _is_ really wrong. Instead of dreaming up an excuse to put herself on the other side of the planet for no especially good reason, she could tell him the truth and hope for the best. And perhaps instead of his immediate distate and distrust and disappointment in the fact that she's falling in love with Gordon Tracy, of all people—he'd be sweet and sympathetic and supportive of the fact that she's lonely and growing lonelier by the minute, and that she craves the company of someone who so completely and utterly adores her.

But instead she just shrugs again, shakes her head, and lies to the other person her life who completely and utterly adores her. "I suppose I don't know, Parker. I suppose it's probably just the season. But as you said—this too shall pass."

"Just so, m'lady."

Actions


	23. time and energy

The problem with twelve hours of work is that it necessitates twelve hours of sleep, at least where the kind of work that International Rescue does can be considered.

So when she finally calls him for the third time in almost as many weeks, Gordon's asleep. He's never been a light sleeper, exactly, but he's done everything in his power to make sure that if she wereto call him, just on the off chance, she'd be able to wake him. To that end, he sleeps with his personal comm tucked beneath his pillow, frequently falls asleep with his fingers curled around it, and has its ringer turned to the loudest possible volume. A shrill, urgent klaxon isn't the sort of sound he wants to associate with Penelope—but it's enough to rouse him from the depths of a deservedly exhausted sleep, at half past three in the morning on Tracy Island, and that's what counts.

"Penny," is the first thing he says, though groggily, half a wish and half a greeting, as he fumbles his comm on in the darkness of his bedroom. He takes the call and the pale blue light of her hologram mingles imperceptibly with the pale blue light of moonlight through his bedroom window. The sight of her wakes him up the rest of the way, and the way she smiles at the sound of her name makes him forget how little sleep he's had, how he's woken up still aching all over from a twelve-hour day, and everything else except how long it's been since he last talked to her.

"Gordon, darling," she says, all warmth and affection and with only the slightest note of reproach as she queries, "Were you sleeping?"

"If I'm not flying, legally I think I gotta be sleeping." He rubs his eyes and summons a reassuring smile for her ladyship, who is lovely and perfect and worth losing sleep over. Even sleep as mandated by the Global Aviation Authority. "S'fine, though, Pen. Hi. Penny. D'you know about how I miss you so much that I wanna run face first into a brick wall?"

She laughs softly and god he's missed her laugh. He's missed every single aspect of her, but her laugh does something incomparable to him. "You hadn't told me that, dearest, no. Please do try to resist the impulse, though, because I couldn't bear for anything to happen to your face. I'm so dreadfully fond of it."

"I'll try and hold off, but it's gonna be tough." The last time they spoke, he'd been so tired that he'd actually fallen asleep on her, but he's wide awake now, even if he's still tired and sore. He sits up in bed and kicks the covers away, sits cross-legged with his comm propped up on the pillow in front of him. "Because I miss you such a hell of a lot."

"I know, darling." She sighs at this, and shakes her head. "I know," she says again, finally. "I miss you, too. And I wish you were here."

Gordon wishes he was there, too. Lately, wherever he is, Gordon finds himself wishing his way back to the way the earliest morning sunlight had filled Penelope's bedroom, all white and gold and satiny softness, and the scent of lilac on every breath. Or he wishes he were back in Paris, and all that cool, blissful darkness, and how none of the shadows were anywhere near as dark as the dress he'd taken her out of, and how the light of the city skyline through the window had traced over every perfect inch of her body.

But it's been eighteen days since Paris, eighteen days since he'd left her. Not long at all, in the grand scheme of things, though these eighteen days seem like they've stretched out much longer than they have any right to. If he's not flying, he's sleeping, covering for Virgil in TB2. He'd known it was going to be bad. He'd made maudlin predictions about just how bad, and had secretly hoped to be proven wrong, but the past two and a half weeks have been even worse than usual. Too busy to keep in touch, though it hasn't been for a lack of trying. Just a lack of time and energy. Even when he can scrape together the time, it's the energy that becomes a problem.

It's been a week since they'd spoken last, and he doesn't really know if the last time should count, because he'd all but passed out on her in the middle of a conversation he can't actually remember. He doesn't even know if they got as far as an actual conversation. He remembers dragging himself to bed, late after wrapping up TB2's post-flights. It had been a mission in the chilly North Atlantic, to patch up the hull of a listing cargo ship and then to tow it back to dry dock, an assignment that had required TB2 and TB4, and had strained Gordon's remote piloting abilities to their absolute limit, because there just hadn't been anyone available for backup.

He remembers stripping down to his boxers and climbing into bed. He remembers fishing his comm out from under his pillow and hazily trying to do the math as related to their respective timezones, the thirteen hour difference between London and Tracy Island—and then giving up and just calling anyway, catching her still in bed. She'd just been waking up, just as he was falling asleep. It would've been serendipitous if he could've stayed conscious. He remembers saying good morning, and then nothing after that. It probably doesn't count.

"I'd give anything to be there," he tells her. "God, Pen, I miss you." This probably sounds fairly pathetic. He doesn't especially care, especially not now, when he's growing so sick and tired of a romance that exists in the margins, in the narrowest of intersections between his life and hers. "I gotta figure out how to tell Scott about us, I don't know what I'm gonna do if I don't get to see you again."

A soft little sound of sympathy escapes her. "Darling, of course you'll see me again."

"Yeah, but I'll see you again sooner if people know about how it's kinda killing me not to."

He's being entirely sincere, but it gets another soft little laugh from her and a knowing smile. "You mean so you have full freedom and license to cast yourself melodramatically about the villa and make everyone else equally as miserable as we're making each other in absentia."

Latin leaves her lips like petals from a rose, a dead language like a dying flower, the most natural thing in the world. Something about Penelope and languages. Something about the way the words of the world over come to her so elegantly and naturally. It's another one of those razor thin intersections of their lives—that they both need languages. But Penelope makes the languages of the world her own, speaks them with ease. For Gordon they're all secondhand, screamed and shouted from desperate people in terror for their lives and in need of his help, translated into his ear with the answers fed back to him, repeated by rote. He always feels like an impostor, trying to use other people's words. She makes it sound as though she's entitled to them.

"Don't with the Latin, Pen, I'm already suffering."

"Ubi amor, ibi dolor, my darling."

Gordon groans and melodramatically topples over onto the mattress. "I don't even want you to tell me what that means, just leave it sounding sexy."

Her laughter is always going to wash over him like the warmth of the sun, even in the dead of night. The clock by his bedside tells him it's half past three in the morning, but he's awake now and not likely to be getting back to sleep. "I'm afraid I can't find the remotest arousal in dreary old Latin, dearest, when I know what the conjugation is like."

As well as she knows language, he knows she's chosen her words with exquisite precision, and there's an agonizing emphasis laid on the word conjugation. She's as wicked as she is beautiful, when there are thirteen hours between them, an entire world between them. When he couldn't be further from her than he is now, she has to go and remind him of conjugation.

Ironically, from the Latin.

On the other side of the planet, she sits in her parlour, while he lies curled up in bed. She's dressed, impeccably, while he's wearing a pair of boxer briefs with seahorses printed on them. It's mid-afternoon in England, and he guesses that she's still at home, because she's still casually dressed by comparison to her usual standard, a plush looking cardigan and a simple silk blouse. Her hair is down and her makeup is minimal, though her eyes are still fringed by dark lashes as she gives him a challenging look. "Are you going to ask me why I called?" she prompts.

"Oh, no, I know that, it's for torture. Straight-up torture."

She shrugs, all artful innocence. "After a fashion, perhaps. I called to tell you where I'll be, approximately twelve hours from now."

If things were different, he might already know that. He feels bad that he hasn't kept track, hasn't been able to hear about what she's been doing with her time. Penelope's probably been keeping tabs on him for the past couple weeks, but it doesn't go both ways—can't go both ways, owing to the nature of her job. Where exactly Penelope is and what exactly Penelope is doing at any given time is a piece of information that could threaten her welfare if widely known, so naturally it's a carefully guarded secret. Thunderbird Five, as an entity, has the capacity to locate her ladyship and track her movements at need, but by and large Penelope stays prudently off the radar. So the only way for Gordon to know where she's going to be is for her to tell him. And there's gotta be a reason she wants to tell him.

"Where's that?"

"In Auckland."

Oh. That's why.

"I'll be there," he tells her immediately, because he just will be, even if he doesn't know how he's going to manage it. He's not sure how he'll get the time off, because there's just no time off to be had. His family's working life is a complex six-way venn diagram of who can cover for who and who can fly what and who needs to sleep and who's okay solo and who still needs back up. It's a miracle that they manage when they're all still functional, but with Virgil out of commission, suddenly the margins are that much narrower. They're shorthanded to the point that John's had to come down for the foreseeable future, filling Gordon's usual role as everybody else's extra pair of hands, and EOS is running TB5 in his absence. "Twelve hours from now? Like, now now?" He pushes himself up to get a look at the clock. "As in half-past four this afternoon? In Auckland? Why're you going to Auckland?"

"I'm going to Auckland because I want to see you. And because I want to do so much more than just see you." She pauses, and then her voice lowers, gains that sultry, sincere note that he's been craving for nearly three weeks. "I've made a hotel reservation. I'll send you the address and the room number, the concierge will have instructions to give you a key. Nothing quite as grand as the last time, I'm afraid, but more than suitable to the intended purpose."

"The intended purpose," he echoes, knowing exactly what she means, but still a little bit dazed by the way she says it, the way she can make such a banal phrase sound so unfathomably sexy.

"I trust I don't need to be more literal than that."

She does not. "Nah, I got it. Twelve hours from now." Twelve hours is suddenly an absolute age away, and yet no time at all. He pushes a hand through his hair and rubs at the back of his neck. "I'll be there," he says again, because he's hoping that saying it will make it true, even as he starts to think aloud, rambling because he can't help it, as he talks his way through the problem. Not that it's going to be a problem. "I'll have to…shit, I've gotta…man, okay, so I'm off rotation 'til 0800, but I'm supposed to be sleeping so I can go back on. Because I'm supposed to be back on call, except—"

"Gordon."

There's an intensity to her voice when Penelope interrupts him, a quality that shuts him up and stops him short when she says his name, makes him really take notice of her, really stop and force his way past how glad he'd been to see her, how easily it is to lose himself in even the illusion of her presence, captivated by her half-size blue hologram. When he pauses for a moment and really looks at her, suddenly he perceives the way she's looking back at him.

It's something in her eyes. Even like this, even with only the ghostly approximation of her for reference, there's something in her gaze that he's not sure he's seen before. Admittedly this is all still new, and it's not like he has the frame of reference he wishes he did, but he's lucky that the moments he's spent looking into her eyes are moments that have been seared into his brain, written onto his heart. He's seen sincerity in her eyes; bright with champagne and in a drafty back hallway beneath a stairwell, in the moment after he'd kissed her for the first time. He's seen mischief, a playful light finding its way into her eyes in the shadowy hallway outside her bedroom door. He flatters himself that he knows what lust looks like on her, because there'd been no denying her motives in Paris, not that he was anything less than perfectly equal to them.

But this isn't that.

It looks like it. It might be she's even wearing desire as a disguise, but there's something more. The way she looks at him and the way she's said his name reminds him suddenly, somehow, of the way people look at him when they're desperately in need.

"Find a way to be there. Please."

"I'll be there," he tells her, a third and final time, and it's a promise now, and he says so outright for good measure, "I promise, Pen."

"Thank you." Her relief is immediate, visible, and intensely cathartic. She nods graciously, and her fingers go to her hairline, brushing back an errant strand. Abruptly she's brusque and businesslike, the flash of vulnerability gone as quick as it had appeared. "But for now, I'd really best be going, darling. I've got to finish packing, and then it's off to Heathrow, and Heathrow to Sydney, and then Sydney to Auckland. And then I have the day to spend on a personal project, and then—" she trails off, and smiles again.

"And then," he agrees, and lets the obvious go unsaid. "I'll see you soon."

"I'm rather counting on it. Go back to sleep, dearest. I expect you to be well-rested."

"I'll try," Gordon tells her, but it's a little white lie, because he's already shifted himself towards the edge of the mattress, trying to remember where his nearest pair of sweatpants are. He's not going back to sleep. "I'll see you, Pen. I love you."

Those three little words slip away from him again, absently, almost casual. He's almost come all the way around to believing that she really doesn't mind. He gets one last smile from her, just before her image vanishes. He pushes his comm back beneath his pillow, and then gets out of bed. Bunched up at the foot of his nightstand, Gordon recovers a pair of pants, and after a few more minutes he turns up a t-shirt, pulling it on as he heads out of his bedroom, then downstairs into the villa proper.

Last he knew, Scott was at their father's desk, working their way through the mire of bureaucratic red tape that keeps IR running. Gordon hopes he's still there now, because there's a conversation he needs to have with his eldest brother. And newly endowed with a promise to keep, now's as good a time as any.


	24. rank and file

His father's desk stands sentinel in the middle of the villa, right at the edge of the lounge. It's perfectly placed and fully equipped for the leader of International Rescue. It's got all manner of command and control and communication functions built into it, and it's the repository of all the official documentation that needs to be dealt with to keep IR up and running. Debriefing reports, mission summaries, all sorts of nonsense that needs to be gone through and officially reviewed, looked over and signed off on.

It's also got a bottle of bourbon in the lower right hand drawer. It turns out that this is essential to the process.

Sometimes, Scott wishes he had his own desk.

Dad's desk is fine, except for the fact that it's _Dad's_ desk. There's no way to sit at his father's desk without thinking of his father, no way to work without feeling the old man's presence, however distant. Scott drinks bourbon because his father drank bourbon, and it doesn't feel right to replace the bottle in the lower right hand drawer with anything else. Pouring himself a second glass on his way through the second half of tonight's paperwork, he can't help remembering the night he found the first bottle, the first time he'd sat in his father's chair since his father had vanished. Six months ago back then; three years ago now.

He can't remember what he'd been looking for, if he'd been looking for anything at all. But he'd found a bottle of dark amber liquor, half-full. They'd all had half a year by that point to grow accustomed to their father's empty desk, to the glaring absence in the middle of their home and the middle of their family. Finding a bottle of Dad's drink of choice had been one of those potent, awful moments that dredged all the grief back up again, brought it all boiling back to the surface.

It had been the middle of the day, and Scott remembers standing up with a half-empty bottle in his hand, and just finding himself frozen, rooted in place by a sudden connection to the man his father had been. The bottle had been heavy in his hand, thick glass and a real wax seal, broken above the lip of the bottle. Dark amber catching the sunlight overhead and flashing with the brilliance of gold, the sort written of by Frost and best known for its impermanence. Time had frozen the way time had a tendency to do, in those first, awful, early months after losing their father. They'd all been lost, trying to find their way forward, trying to figure out if there even _could_ be a way forward without anyone at the helm.

If he'd been alone, he's pretty sure he'd just have sat down and drank the whole thing, straight, by himself.

But he hadn't been. For whatever reason, Gordon had been there too.

And a moment that he could've had alone became a moment that they had together. The bottle had been gently pulled out of his hands, and if Scott had taken his rightful place sitting at their father's desk, Gordon had taken his rightful place sitting _on_ it, perched on the corner. If he considered the bottle to have any of the same sort of significance that Scott had, he hadn't shown it. What had been an object of reverence in Scott's hands was just an object in Gordon's, and he'd hefted it lightly, and then nonchalantly pulled the stopper out. Taken a whiff and made some comment about how it was just exactly like their father to want to drink rocket fuel, and gotten a laugh out of Scott, where there might have wanted to be tears. And the pair of them had had a drink together, to the memory of their father, and to finding their way forward.

 _That_ bottle's long since emptied, and there've been too many to count since then. The bottle sitting on the corner of the desk now isn't an object of reverence, so much as it is a quiet testament, a memorial. Something his father left behind to help make his life a little easier, as he very much needs it to be, when it's four in the morning and he's trying to catch up on a very busy week's worth of tedious bureaucracy. The lights in the lounge are dimmed down, and the sky overhead isn't bright enough yet to overcome the pale blue glow of the holograms that radiate off the desktop, Scott's backlog of paperwork. It's funny that they still call it paperwork, when everything's been digitized for decades now. Even back when the paperwork used to be his father's problem, though it really wasn't all that long ago.

Scott looks up at the sound of footsteps, and tries to remember who's supposed to be up at this hour. Alan and John are both working—generating _more_ paperwork—somewhere high overhead in LEO, where they're helping to reroute traffic around a satellite collision in orbital shipping lanes. John's presence probably hadn't technically been _necessary_ , but Scott wasn't about to deny him the chance to get back into orbit, even if only briefly. Brains is working, that much Scott's sure of, but lately Brains' chosen projects have taken him high up into the roundhouse, and it's been rare that he makes an appearance if he's not directly needed. Kayo's off somewhere in Asia on an unspecified errand for the GDF, though Scott had been reluctant to let her go, to have her so far out of reach when they're so desperately shorthanded. Virgil's probably sleeping, not that it matters what Virgil's doing at any given hour. Grandma's asleep, habitually early to bed and early to rise. So that leaves—

Gordon wanders into the lounge, down from the upper part of the villa. Scott deliberately glances at his watch, though he's well aware of the time. Something must be up to have brought him down at this hour of the morning, because Gordon's supposed to be sleeping. It's important and necessary that Gordon be sleeping, because there are legal mandates in place that require Gordon to be well-rested before he's allowed to fly. Gordon knows this just as well as Scott does. He _needs_ eight hours of sleep before he's eligible to fly again. By Scott's reckoning he can't have had more than three.

Still—and maybe it's down to the glass of bourbon that's gone before the current one, and the memories that go along with it—as Gordon comes ambling over to the desk, Scott finds himself glad of the company, and lifts his drink in acknowledgment. He gets a grin and a wave from his little brother as he approaches. Gordon lifts his chin and takes a deep, exaggerated sniff of the air, before he asks, "What's that burning smell, Scotty, the midnight oil or both ends of the candle?"

"Can it be both?"

Gordon shakes his head. "Nah, more than one combustion-based idiom per _stupidly_ late night is a fire hazard. Sorry, bro. I don't make the rules."

Scott chuckles, then pushes his chair away from the desk and stretches, failing to stifle a yawn as Gordon sits himself on the far edge of the desktop. He's still the only one who does this. No one's told ever told him off for it and Scott's not about to start. He rubs his eyes and settles back in his chair. "I'm not the one who's supposed to be back on call in six hours," he points out, glancing pointedly at his watch again.

Gordon just shrugs, and doesn't move from where he sits at the edge of the desk. "Couldn't sleep," he says glibly, and then reaches over to page through one of the holographic displays Scott's been referencing, as he completes reports for the appropriate authorities with regard to their recent operations. He watches Gordon's eyes skim over the data he's pulled up—flight logs from TB2—and sighs as his brother recognizes what he's looking at. " _Shit_ , Scotty, this was _weeks_ ago. This is…what, this is the mission data from that avalanche up in the Yukon? The one me and Kayo worked?"

Scott nods. "Yeah."

"You're _two weeks_ behind?"

" _No_ ," Scott protests, made defensive by the note of incredulity in Gordon's tone, "I'm _one_ week behind. Tops. _That_ one just kind of…slipped through the cracks. Local authorities submitted a formal request for our mission data and reminded me about an hour ago that they were still waiting on it. I just hadn't gotten around to reviewing it and packing it up before now."

Gordon's gone back to paging through the flight log, an assembly of visual and audio recordings, data collected by assorted scanners, as well as their own briefing and debriefing about the way the mission had gone. Avalanche in the Yukon. Buried a small mining camp at the base of a mountain. A dozen lives saved, two fatalities; lives lost before Gordon had Kayo had even made it onto the scene. Nothing they could've done, but it's still hard to recover bodies. Scott watches his brother for any sign that he's distressed by the memory, but where Gordon's usually an emotional open book—something about his expression now is oddly guarded, carefully neutral.

It wasn't really all that long ago that Scott still thought of Gordon as a kid. Sitting atop their father's desk, swinging his feet as often as not, leaning back on his hands without the least reverence for anything in the world. If Alan's got a babyish quality about him—a sort of roundness of his face and innocence of his outlook and occasional childishness of his manner that makes him readily identifiable as the youngest—Gordon's got a similar quality of boyishness, even at twenty-five. There's always been a certain boundless energy to him, an absence of reserve or restriction that Scott wonders if he ever had to grow out of, himself. Looking at his little brother now, and seeing him look uncertain, reluctant—he wonders if he might have caught Gordon in the act of growing out of it. Deep down he wonders if that might not be a damn shame.

"Well," Gordon says lightly, after a few moments of silence, "They're Canadians. Worst case scenario, in another two weeks you get another reminder, along with a passive-aggressive apology for even asking in the first place."

Scott just shakes his head and sighs, reaches for his glass again. "It shouldn't have gotten to the point where they needed to remind me. John's usually on top of this kinda thing; usually I sit down here at the end of the day and there's a packet waiting for me. I go through it all, sign off on all the stuff, send it back up to TB5, and he forwards it wherever it's supposed to go. Except—"

"Except for once Jaybird's actually busting the same amount of ass as the rest of us," Gordon finishes, though in unkinder terms than Scott would've used. "Should've made Virg handle it."

Their brother is many things—an artist, an engineer, a pilot and a musician—but he's about as far from a bureaucrat as it's possible to be, and he doesn't have the temperament to unsnarl all the red tape that goes along with the work they do. Scott shakes his head again. "He wouldn't know where to start."

Gordon scoffs, derisive. "He's sure as hell got enough time on his hands to figure it out."

This had crossed Scott's mind. Delegation has never been one of his strong suits. "Maybe."

"You're just a control freak, is what it is."

This not an inaccurate assessment. Scott doesn't take it personally. "Probably."

"There aren't enough hours in the day, Scotty. Something's gotta give."

Scott's heard that before. Thankfully it hasn't been true yet. "I'll get it done." He clears his throat and from behind his dad's desk, drinking his dad's bourbon, he summons up his dad's voice, which occasionally serves him well in situations like these. "Speaking of hours in the day, _you_ still need to log another…what, six hours of rack time? Seven? You went to bed at midnight. Have you slept at all?"

"Kinda."

Scott raises an eyebrow. " _Kinda_? if you don't sleep, then you can't _fly_ , Gordon. And if _you_ can't fly, then we're down the only pilot we've got who can handle TB2 without backup. And you know how short we are on backup right now."

Gordon shifts where he sits, but he doesn't make eye-contact. Something about his demeanour seems off, somehow. Scott still can't quite put a finger on it, as his little brother shrugs again. "Yeah. I know that."

Of course he does. And in the nearly three weeks since Virgil's been off the roster, Scott's been nothing but impressed with the way Gordon's picked up the slack, risen to the considerable challenge of filling Virgil's shoes. They're all doing more to make up for his absence, but Gordon's functionally responsible for two out of six Thunderbirds for the past eighteen days, and he's worked twelve days out of those eighteen. Scott knows this, he's done the paperwork. It occurs to him for the first time that maybe this is starting to take a bit of a toll on his little brother. Maybe the change in his overall manner is down to the fact that he's tired, though that's something of a rarity. It's hard to wear Gordon out.

Not _impossible_ , though.

And since it's Scott's job to keep on top of this kind of thing, he's appropriately gentle as he asks, "You okay?"

Gordon looks up at this, then glances briefly over his shoulder as though there's anyone else present. There isn't, of course. "Who, me?"

There grandmother has a saying about the ratio of stupid questions to inquisitive idiots, and unfailingly it's Gordon who calls it to mind. "Who else, dumbass?"

"Well, obviously _I'm_ fine, so I don't know why you'd be asking _me_. _You're_ the bastard drinking his way through week-old paperwork at four in the morning, Scooter. How're _you_ doing?"

The fact that he's deflecting such a simple question only makes Scott wonder about the truth of the answer. He presses the point, because that's his job. "Gordo, the difference between you and me right now is that if I _could_ be sleeping, I _would_ be. You could be, but you're not. Instead you're down here. After a twelve hour day. And since you've dragged yourself out of bed _and_ put pants on for the occasion, you've kinda got me wondering if there's something on your mind."

Gordon grins at that, and reflexively bats Scott's concern away again, "Ooh, I _knew_ I should've skipped the pants. People always take me _way_ too seriously when I have pants on."

Scott rolls his eyes and reaches for his drink. "Well, if it's nothing _serious_ —"

"I mean," Gordon continues, though he's taken an intense interest in a tiny hole in the knee of his sweatpants, and has started picking at the threads around the edges of it. "I guess it's kinda not. It is and it isn't. I dunno."

This is starting to get a little bit concerning. It's not like Gordon to hedge about anything. "Is something wrong?"

Gordon shakes his head, doesn't look up. A little pill of thread rolls and twists between his fingertips. "Nah."

"If you need to talk to me, Gordon, just talk to me. C'mon."

That might've been the wrong move, because pressing the point just seems to drive his little brother further into reticence, into an uncharacteristic silence that has Scott looking at him more carefully.

"There is something," he says, finally, after a pause that was stretching up into a minute. More thought than usual seems to be going into his choice of words as he continues, "But I dunno—maybe now's not a good time? Except for how there just never seems to _be_ a good time. We're _so_ goddamn busy. I think this is the first time in three weeks that I've actually caught you for more than an hour. And yeah, I'm exhausted, but I dragged myself outta bed, put on pants, and then I hauled my ass down here—only you're up to your neck in last week's paperwork, two glasses deep in a fresh bottle of Maker's Mark, and _you're_ exhausted, too. And so I kinda think maybe I don't wanna start anything—don't wanna make _you_ start anything, even if it's just a conversation—when neither of us are at our best. You know?"

This is such a remarkably adult thing for Gordon to say that it takes Scott a few moments to actually process.

"So there's something you wanna talk to me about," he concludes, slowly and carefully, "But you're not ready to talk to me about it tonight?"

Gordon nods. "Yeah."

"What would need to happen, for us to have this conversation?" Scott asks, still careful. It's so entirely unlike Gordon to give anything this much forethought, and Scott doesn't want to accidentally spook him out of it. "Hypothetically."

"Hypothetically?"

"Yeah. What do I need to do?"

That gets Gordon to look up, and his eyes narrow slightly, appraising. "Gimme tomorrow off?" he asks, though there's already a doubtful note in his voice, like he doesn't think the request will go over well, because he's quick to amend, "Like, not even _all_ of tomorrow. I just need twelve hours. Eight. I just wanna get off this stupid island for a while. I won't go far, even. Just into Auckland." There's a pause, and then, "…Please?"

Scott doesn't answer immediately. The logical answer is a regretful "no", because even without looking at the roster as it stands, Scott's well aware that they can't really spare Gordon. Alan and John are about to be off-rotation, within the confines of the atmosphere, the pair of them are really only good as backup, anyway. Virgil, of course, is functionally useless. Kayo's currently unavailable and no one quite knows when she's going to be back. For Scott's part, he's due eight hours of sleep before he can fly again, though the drink-and-a-half he's had so far is going to stretch that downtime from eight hours up into twelve. Gordon's supposed to be back on the clock as of 1000h, but with him still awake at 0400h that timeframe is starting to look like it won't be viable.

In the lengthening silence, unnecessarily, Scott pulls up a new hologram, an accounting of the past month's rescues. It's all colour-coded and cross-referenced, a complicated 3D rendition of all of their uptime and downtime. Time spent sleeping versus time spent flying. Flight hours versus required maintenance. Rescues in every corner of the globe, and Gordon's covered about half of them. Scott's got a vague conception of the month so far as it is, and so he doesn't really _need_ the hard data—but it helps him settle on his answer.

"Yeah, sure." He tries to sound casual as he says so, like it wasn't a choice he had to wrangle with. And then the bourbon chimes in, helpfully, as Scott makes an impulsive decision. "Fuck it, we'll all take one. Twenty-four hour standby, starting when John and Allie get back on the ground."

This is clearly not the answer his brother was expecting, and he's surprised and plainly skeptical. "What, really? You mean it?"

Scott nods, decisive now, before he can second-guess himself. "I'm a _week behind_ on paperwork. _You're_ so beat you're not even sleeping. Gravity's gotta be kicking John's ass, even if he'd never admit to it. And Alan turns twenty in a week's time and I don't think any of us have even thought about that. _Yeah_ , I mean it." He reaches for his drink again, downs the last of it. Now that he's settling into his own permission to take tomorrow off, the next place he's headed is bed. "One condition, though."

Gordon's agreement is quick, uncautious. "Sure, hit me."

"When you get back from wherever you go; you and me sit down and have a beer, and we can talk about whatever you weren't ready to talk about tonight. Fair?"

Gordon considers this, frowning slightly, brow furrowed. "Mmm. Can _you_ have a beer and I can have a tequila sunrise? On account of how beer is nasty?"

"Whatever floats your little yellow boat, brother."

"Banana daiquiri."

"Sure."

"Green appletini."

"Gross."

"Sex on the Beach."

"Gordon, just whatever gets you drunk enough to actually talk to me."

Gordon nods, contemplative. "Maybe two appletinis. Appletini and a shot of Fireball. Ooh, no, Fireball and Coke. Rum and Coke? Whatever. I'll figure it out. But hey, you got yourself a deal, Scooter." At this, his little brother sticks his hand across the table, so they can shake on it, and Scott obliges, a proper handshake, the way his father taught him. He wonders if this is something Dad taught all of them, because Gordon's got that same steady grip, firm but not forceful, and gives a good solid shake. "No takebacks," he adds sternly.

That's something their father wouldn't have included, but Scott chuckles all the same, yawning and stretching in his chair. "No chance. I'm gonna go crash. John'll wake me when he and Alan get back in, and I'll put us officially into downtime then. You oughta get back to bed, Gordie. Sleep in. You've earned it."

Gordon levers himself off the desk, obedient. And tired, probably, by the way he catches Scott's yawn and mimics it, stretches and rubs his eyes. "Yeah, okay. You too, right?"

Scott gets up, as though that'll prove it. He pushes the chair back into the desk to emphasize his intention. "Yeah. Thanks for coming down. I think I needed the excuse to stop. And thanks for wanting a day off. I think we all need the break."

"Man, I _know_ we do."

Scott knows that too, and sighs to himself as he circles out from around the desk. Gordon reflexively straightens up, though in his bare feet he's still fully half a foot shorter than his older brother. Scott takes the opportunity to ruffle his already touseled hair, gets swatted on the wrist for his trouble. "Yeah, well, I think none of us would've said so. Me included."

In retalation for the ruffled hair, Gordon punches him in the arm. The affection tells in the way that it wasn't as hard as it could've been. "Cheer up, fearless leader," he admonishes lightly. "Go to bed. You're working just as hard as the rest of us, and if no one else'll tell you so, then it's a good thing I came down. Seriously, Scott. Get some sleep."

"Yeah, yeah. I need to go drink enough water to head off the hangover, and then I'll crash. _You_ go _back_ to bed."

"Yessir, chief." Gordon flicks a little mock salute off his temple, before he starts to wander back up to bed. "Night, Scotty," he calls over his shoulder.

"Good night, Gordon."


	25. him and her

Parker might not have taught Penelope quite everything she knows, but he certainly taught her enough about lying to be able to tell when she's perhaps being somewhat less than truthful. And when she'd told him her reasons for going to Auckland, he'd detected all the hallmarks of a well-told lie, and known better than to believe her.

But when he'd gently pressed for the truth, her ladyship had declined to tell it. And so Parker had dutifully let it be.

It was her father who taught her to keep secrets, even secrets that may not need keeping. But then, Parker's known Hugh long enough to read his Lordship's tells in his Lordship's daughter. They both tend to brush their fingers across their temples, or fold their hands in their laps. They both fidget, for lack of a better word, though it's all very genteel, subtle fidgeting, and both of them would be deeply offended to be called out for doing so, because it's the sort of tasteful, unremarkable fidgeting that no one's meant to make anything of.

So Parker makes no particular remark, as Lady Penelope fidgets in the backseat of FAB1. The drive from Creighton-Ward Manor to Heathrow in London is a familiar one, and Parker could probably make it with his eyes closed. With the flip of a switch he could set their destination and sit back, relax, and wonder about the redundancy of his presence for such a simple thing as a drive to the airport. But Penelope had asked him if he would be so kind as to drive her, and of course there was no turning her down, even if she just as easily could've made her own way.

He's only accompanying her ladyship as far as Heathrow, after all. She'll be on her own for her journey to Auckland, had declined his accompaniment for her self-appointed errand there. And if she's asked him along on the drive for the simple pleasure of his company, she hasn't made the slightest overture towards conversation. Her silence is dense and pensive in the backseat as she stares out at the rapid blur of the English countryside, and fidgets, in a most unladylike fashion. And Parker, in the manner of a good driver, watches without watching. For all intents and purposes, his eyes remain on the road, though his gaze drifts occasionally, as a good driver's should, to the rearview mirror and his silent, pensive passenger.

In the backseat, Parker watches as her ladyship sighs softly to herself. She's dressed for traveling, chic and sophisticated in a simple grey dress and leggings, her only accent a muted Burberry silk scarf, pink and charcoal, wrapped around her shoulders against the slight chill in the air. Her fingertips brush an errant strand of hair from her temple.

Penelope's grown sick and tired of England. She'd said as much, or nearly. Parker had been listening closely when she had, so he knows what she actuallysaid was that she felt the need of some sunshine. Lately it's been his suspicion that she doesn't mean this in the literal sense of the word. Spain, after all, is only a stone's throw away. Or Portugal. Or the Mediterranean. If all she'd wanted was sunshine, there are quicker and easier ways to come by sunny skies than taking herself all the way across the globe. It's possible there's a certain very specificsort of sunshine that her ladyship has been pining for, that she needs to heac all the way out to the Antipodes in order to get it.

Parker's quietly harbored this particular suspicion ever since her ladyship returned from Paris.

Of course, he hasn't had it confirmed one way or the other, though he's made several careful overtures in an attempt to give Lady Penelope a chance to explain. To 'fess up, as it were, to just what exactly had happened in the aptly named City of Love, and whether she'd come out of her cursory Valentine's Day encounter with more than she might have bargained for. But his every incidental inquiry has been rebuffed, and every opening he's left in casual conversation has been deliberately skirted past.

Now her ladyship sits in the backseat of FAB-1, on her way to the airport for a transparently inane "new project" on the other side of the world, her imminent journey to Auckland and her designs upon Langstrom Fischler, of the ill-fated Fischler Industries. The whole situation seems to have coalesced out of the ether in almost alarmingly short order. Parker hadn't been privy to the call Penelope had made to Langstrom Fischler, but he wonders at the kind of flattery and influence she must have had to leverage in order to secure herself a tour of his facilities at such short notice. She's expected in Auckland sharply at 10 AM, to be met at the airport by the man himself. From there, it's going to be on to an investigation of his facilities, with the intent to glean some insight into current goings-on at Fischler Industries.

Or so she claims, anyway.

If Parker had to pick a single word to describe this sudden scheme of her ladyship's, it would probably be "harebrained"—but he's not about to tell her so. Harebrained schemes are entirely out of character for her ladyship. There's obviously something else at play.

So he keeps his tone light and casual as he makes the first overture towards conversation since the drive began. He intrudes upon her ladyship's thoughts without warning, with a trick that hasn't worked since her girlhood, "And shall Master Gordon be meeting you at the h'airport this time, or…?"

"No, I've told him where I expect to—"

Penelope stops abruptly, catching herself. There's the very smallest intake of breath as she realizes what she's said. Her bright blue eyes fix upon the rearview mirror, and Parker can feel the smile that crinkles at the corners of his own as he looks back at her.

"That was unkind," she chides softly, and for a moment he thinks he sees hurt in her eyes, a flash of injury at the betrayal, or frustration with herself for falling into such an obvious trap. Her composure returns quickly enough, and her expression grows disapproving. "Really, Parker. That was childish."

"Not as though you were making much conversation yourself, m'lady," Parker points out mildly. "I only meant to ask h'after your plans for the trip, since I've been so very much left h'out of them. And if I may say, your ladyship, you've been rather unlike your usual self, lately. It's just how it's my job to wonder after why."

It's raining. And in her answering silence, the rain against the windshield seems all the louder and the blur of the English countryside suddenly seems worthy of her ladyship's attention once again, as her gaze drifts back to the window. And that carefully neutral expression of hers takes on a melancholy cast, as she shrugs. "Well," she says, with a winsome, sad little smile, "Now you know it's because I've been lonely."

And if that doesn't go straight through to the heart of him, then Parker would have to be without one entirely. "M'lady," he laments immediately, all tenderness and sympathy. "I've no h'objection if you tell me he really does make you happy, your ladyship, but if you tell me he's made you lonely, then I'm gonna h'wallop'im.'"

"I would very much prefer it if you did not."

Parker shrugs. "You've h'always managed your own h'walloping at need, I s'pose. Remember what I taught you, if you've ever the need to go h'upside his thick skull."

He's only teasing, but it plays such an anguished expression across her features that he regrets it almost instantly and she sighs. "I hope you don't wonder why I hadn't told you, because that's just exactly the reason."

"Only joking, m'lady," he offers, conciliatory and apologetic.

"Are you, though?"

"Ought to know better than to take me quite so seriously, your ladyship'," Parker protests, but he's aware that it's not much of an excuse. Of course Penelope takes him seriously. She's one of the few people in the world who knows him well enough to do so. With this in mind, he's perfectly serious as he offers a genuine apology, "I'm sorry if I've made you feel as though you couldn't tell me."

Penelope shakes her head, rueful. "We've had the very devil of a time telling anyone, really. It seems to come out in fits and spurts, bits and pieces, and no one ever seems quite privy to the whole picture. At first it seemed so important that it should all stay secret, just between him and I—but of course we couldn't go on like that. Paris was meant to be an end to keeping it between ourselves, but with one thing and another…oh…it doesn't really matter. It's just so hard to broach the subject. It's not just you we hadn't told, Parker—or it's not as though you're the last to know, at least. As far as I can tell, Scott doesn't either."

The most salient detail in this sudden torrent of information is that Paris wasn't the beginning of things. Parker glances at her ladyship in the rearview mirror again, arching an eyebrow. "What was Paris, then, m'lady, if not the beginning of things? When did this all start?"

He's watching as Penelope's eyes fix on his in the mirror again, and hands go to smooth out her scarf where it lies around her shoulders, fussing and fidgeting yet again as she finally tells the truth, "It was Grandma Tracy's birthday." She's shy and coquettish as her fingers toy pink and gray tassels, and she keeps her gaze demurely lowered as she continues, "In the back corridor behind the ballroom, after the party had wound its way down. He found me, we sat, we talked. I kissed him."

"You did?" The surprise in his voice comes too suddenly to be stifled, the notion that her ladyship had been the one to make the first move. Of course it's always been obvious the way Gordon feels about Penelope, and this is no small part of the reason why Parker's always treated him with a degree of lofty disapproval—but he'd never imagined for a moment that it might be a two way street. It's why the whole idea of Paris had seemed so ridiculous in the first place.

Parker's also aware that he's somewhat biased.

"Don't sound so shocked," Penelope chides, frowning. "I take an enormous amount of offense at the notion that anyone should be surprised that I might want to kiss Gordon Tracy. You're just lucky you're only the second worst offender."

This is a category in which Parker was not expecting to take second place.

"I imagine Master Scott's going to be at least twice as surprised as I am," he suggests, probing towards who exactly could find this more surprising than he does.

"But still only half as surprised as Gordon seems to be," Penelope answers dryly. "It's been nearly two months, and I swear, sometimes I think he still doesn't quite believe that it's actually happened. Him and I."

It's probably not her ladyship's intention, but Parker feels strangely gratified by this information. There's a brief spark of connection between him and Gordon Tracy, that they could both be so surprised that her ladyship would take an interest. It's not quite warmth, not quite yet—but Parker's glad to know that the boy at least has the sense to recongize the sheer improbability of him and her. He's appropriately charitable as he replies, "Well, m'lady, to be quite honest, there hasn't been a tremendous amount of happenin' between the pair of you. Leastwise, not lately. I'd never've known it if I hadn't made quite a lucky guess. Can't blame 'im for finding the whole thing a bit difficult to trust to. Find it pretty hard to believe m'self."

Penelope sighs. "It's why I so very much wish we could start to tell people properly. We're caught in this horrible sort of limbo and it's growing terribly tiresome. But poor Gordon's just been working such an awful lot lately, what with Virgil out of action and the world up and falling apart every other day. We haven't had time to be together, let alone properly tell people that we're together," she pauses, and then adds, sincere and contrite, "I'm sorry this was the way you found out."

"Nothing to h'apologize for, m'lady," Parker tells her staunchly, declining her apology. "Probably for the best I worked it out on me own, really. Came around to the h'idea gradually, less of a shock that way."

"I suppose there's something appropriate about that," Penelope agrees wryly. "Though I do so hate it when there are secrets between us, Parker."

Secrets are just par for the course when dealing with the Creighton-Wards. Parker's had two generations to grow used to this. He wonders idly just how well Master Gordon's going to cope with this particular aspect of her ladyship's personality. "Ah, well. There's secrets that need keeping, m'lady, and then there's secrets that get kept out of sheer force of habit. I don't hold it h'against you."

"I do feel rather better for having gotten it out in the open," she admits, and then there's a hint of a smile playing about her rosebud lips. "And you've taken it a great deal better than I was afraid you would."

After a week of watching Penelope moping around the manor, any indication that she's beginning to feel better is good news in Parker's books. "I hope so, m'lady." He hesitates briefly, and then makes a careful overture, "D'you mind if I h'ask a few questions, m'lady? About the…ah…the nature of the whole situation?"

"Do you mind if I reserve the right not to answer?" Penelope smiles properly now, arch and appropriately superior, "A lady doesn't kiss and tell, after all."

Parker isn't after anything like the gory details. He's already asked these particular questions once before, watching her ladyship dress for what was apparently quite a fateful evening in Paris. He asks them again in hopes of a better answer—

"Why him? Why now?"

Whatever this answer is, it deserves his full attention. Parker's already set the auto-drive as he fixes his gaze on Penelope in the rearview mirror, and sees her looking back at him, perfectly equal to the question. She lifts her chin slightly and there's almost a note of defiance in her tone as she answers, "Because he had the nerve to say he's in love with me. And because there are precious few people in the world who know me well enough to be in love with me. Oh, I'm admired, certainly. Adored, even. Plenty of people like me, appreciate me. But so few people actually know who I am. It's what we talked about this morning—the version of myself that exists out in the world is a functional construct and I hide behind it. So very few people see behind the curtain."

Parker's so far behind the curtain he's practically in her ladyship's dressing room, which was incidentally where they'd actually been, the last time he'd followed this line of inquiry. The first time he'd had the very beginnings of an inkling that Penelope might have been somewhat less than truthful about the whole thing.

Knowing the truth makes him feel something that's difficult to define. There's a natural wariness of anyone who'd weasel their way past the layers and layers of obfuscation that conceal the young woman Parker's known from girlhood— only as much as he might want to, there's no fault to find with Gordon Tracy. In spite of their ongoing and mutual campaign of sniping at each other in reasonably good humour, there's nothing to actually hold against him. There's perhaps a certain sense of melancholy at that— at the thought of someone else finding their way into her ladyship's innermost circle— only he could never truly be upset about anything that makes Penelope happy. And with the warmth in her voice, there's no question of her happiness.

He still feels the need to ask, just to be sure.

"He makes you happy, m'lady?"

Her smile is answer enough, but she answers him anyway, with a gentle nod. "He does. Oh, Parker. Happier than I knew I could be, sometimes."

At the end of the day, that's all that's ever mattered to Parker.

And with her ladyship's happiness to consider, he feels it's probably not the moment to mention that he's still going to wallop the boy if the need arises. For Master Gordon's sake, as much as Lady Penelope's, Parker at least hopes it does not.


	26. politesse and geniality

From Creighton-Ward Manor to Auckland takes fully nine hours worth of travel time. FAB-1 to Heathrow, two hours. Heathrow to Sydney via Fireflash, another five. Sydney to Auckland, two hours aboard a private jet sent by Fischler Industries. When Penelope finally deplanes, it's to the unseasonable heat of an antipodean climate. England seems a rainy grey blur in the back of her mind, and as she descends the small staircase to the tarmac, the heat seems to hit her like she's opened an oven door, and she's grateful she took the time to change her outfit.

She'd left Heathrow in a simple dress of warm grey wool, with a pink and charcoal burberry silk scarf against England's late winter chill. She'd changed before boarding her flight from Sydney, and so in Auckland, it's a simple, softly pleated skirt in a dark blue fabric that flutters around her knees with the breeze off the runway, and a simple white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, patterned in navy damask. It's a deliberately basic outfit, winsome and girlish. Her general experience with Langstrom Fischler is that he's far more tractable when he feels he's the sharpest member of any given party. Dressing too smartly or with an overabundance of sophistication is the sort of thing that might throw him off his game. Despite the transparency of the errand that's brought her here, Penelope's professional habits are hard to break.

A car waits for her on the private runway to which she's been delivered, and the man who waits beside it is the reason she's glad she wore heels, though she's still a fair few inches shorter than her host and her feet are already starting to hurt. Langstrom is tall and broad shouldered, and rocks on the balls of his feet as he waits for her to approach, bursting into a unfettered grin at the sight of her. He's in suspenders and his shirtsleeves, and these are rolled up past his elbows, exposing brawny and deeply tanned forearms. "Lady Penelope!" he calls, and sweeps a dramatic and unnecessary bow in her general direction. "Can't even tell you how pleased I am to have you here!"

" _Dear_ Langstrom, I can't tell you how pleased I am that you were kind enough to have me," Penelope answers, smoothing over the weariness of nine hours worth of travel with glossy politesse and geniality. Her smile is carefully calibrated as he straightens up and takes the hand she's extended, gives it a firm and businesslike sort of shake. Her handbag hangs neatly from her shoulder, and her other hand pulls the handle of the small overnight suitcase she's brought, which Fischler is kind enough to reach for. "And at such short notice." As he takes her bag, she lays her hand lightly on his arm. "Especially when I've been so terribly curious about your current developments. You take such a refreshing view of the world, and I've a few pet projects of my own that could benefit from your particular brand of insight."

Fischler chortles at that, wagging a warning finger at her, as he hefts her bag. "Flattery will get you everywhere, your ladyship."

Her bag is deposited in the trunk of the sleek silver car he's brought to the airport, the back door is opened for her, and Penelope daintily seats herself inside. The interior is as streamlined as the exterior, slick and futuristic to an almost alienating degree. The seats face inward rather than forward, and the car is driverless. This is hardly a rarity, but far from Penelope's own preference. Even FAB-1 has an autodrive feature, though it's rarely engaged.

Langstrom joins her in the back of the car, beaming again as he observes her, observing the absence of a driver. "Thought we'd get straight into it, down to brass tacks," he declares, and gestures grandly at the interior of the vehicle. "Fischler Industries' latest luxury car prototype, the _CARRR_ —Completely Autonomous Remote Relay Roadster. We're going to redefine the word—won't be able to use it in common speech without the little TM on the end of it. Shame you left that chauffeur of yours behind, I'd be interested in his opinion about his forthcoming _obsolescence_."

"Oh, I think as long as I'm around, there'll always be a place in the world for Parker," Penelope answers blandly, feeling her smile affix itself to her features, where it will remain a semi-permanent fixture for the rest of the day, armor against whatever inanities she needs to tolerate. "There's nothing quite like a driver one can trust, after all."

"Nothing quite like a car the drives itself, either! Take it away, CARRR!" With that, and with a wave of his hand over some sort of sensor, there's a hum as the passenger door slides closed, and then a slight jolt as the vehicle powers into motion. Penelope's stomach responds with an anxious flutter of queasiness, at the thought of making the trip from the airport all the way to Fischler Industries on the other side of the city, in a car without a driver, in the company of a man once referred to by Time Magazine as "The Maddest Mind in New Zealand".

At least it's a small country.

* * *

It's a reasonably well-known adage that it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown, but Penelope doubts that whoever came up with that saccharine little lump of wisdom ever had to pass an entire six hours, _smiling_.

After a day of being led around Fischler Industries by her enthusiastic host, Penelope's not sure whether her cheeks or her feet hurt more. The heels were a mistake, but she's _tiny_ without them, and Fischler is not a man one wants to be tiny beside. The force of his personality steamrolls over anyone and everyone in his path, and woe betide anyone who doesn't get out of the way.

The irony of today is that none of this is actually _necessary_. Her clever little subterfuge, her excuse to get to the other side of the world—it had become a moot point by the time FAB-1 had pulled up to Heathrow for her five hour flight to Sydney. Parker had even made the suggestion that it wasn't too late to cancel on Mr. Fischler, rather than endure an entire day of his specific brand of nonsense—but Penelope hadn't been able to stomach the sheer rudeness of it all, even where Langstrom Fischler was considered.

And after all, there _was_ an element of sincerity to her motives. She'd been curious what he was up to. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, after all, and she's thought of today rather like intelligence gathering. Running singsong in the back of her mind, an unpleasant little voice seems determined to remind her that Fischler has, on two separate occasions, nearly gotten Gordon actually _killed_. It makes her smile ache a little more than it might otherwise, as she listens to him prattling on.

The blessing and the curse of dealing with Langstrom Fischler that he's a little too self-obsessed to notice anything like the subtext that runs through a conversation. He's not nearly guileful enough to realize when he's being plumbed for information. Hidden behind wide blue eyes and an empty-headed smile, with an airily affected manner of polite interest, there's very little Penelope couldn't get past him.

She just doesn't have the energy to try. And with the afternoon winding to a close, Penelope begins to realize that she's retained very little information from the course of her whirlwind tour of the sprawling facility. Something about an Orbital Space Train. Something about an Underwater Luxury Hotel. Something _completely_ baffling about an effort to revitalize the Eden Space, though Penelope has it on good authority that Eden was blown into smithereens, late last year. It's all gone in one ear and out the other, and she can't pretend she's terribly sorry about the fact.

Her tour wraps up in Fischler's office, where she's finally been allowed to sit down, across from Langstrom's desk, where he sits with his feet propped up on the corner, leaning back in his chair, still in his shirtsleeves. On his orders someone has kindly furnished Penelope with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits. Lunch seems as though it was ages ago, and Penelope hadn't had much of an appetite at the time, having just been through a laboratory where Fischler Industries nutritionists were hard at work on developing a palatable algae burger for service at the aforementioned undersea hotel. To no great success, by the smell of the place.

The tea, at least, is nice, and in the air conditioned vault of Fischler's private office, the warmth of it is welcome. It's still stickily hot outside, and soon as Penelope leaves she knows she'll be wilting in the heat—but for now she's got a bit of a chill going, and is grateful for a hot cup of passably prepared Orange Pekoe and some sort of malt biscuit that she's rapidly acquiring a taste for.

"Penny for your thoughts," Fischler jokes, for about the dozenth time since the beginning of their day together. "Or, if you need a moment to ruminate on the whole experience, I'll let you gather your wool."

"It _is_ quite a lot," Penelope deflects, as an excuse for having absolutely nothing of value to contribute to the conversation. She's lucky to be something of an expert in prodding other people through a conversation, and she gives Fischler a bit of a metaphorical shove— "What were you happiest to have me see?"

He perks up immediately at the opportunity to go on at length again, and beams at her across the desktop "Oh, the underwater hotel. Easily. I've already got the partnerships lined up for _that_ one, it's just how the engineering's proving to be a bit devilish. There's a bloke I've got to introduce you to, name of LaMere?"

Penelope's lucky for the teacup, concealing her suddenly frozen expression. "Not _Francois_ LaMere?" she asks, as though it could be anyone else.

Fischler seems pleased that she's heard of one of the most prolific celebrity adventurers of the modern era. " Kicked up a big to-do about Atlantis last year. Put out a book about it and everything. He's gone and bought fifty percent of the controlling interest in the project, would you believe it?"

"How fortunate for you. He's certainly an…enthusiast. And hardly reserved about his chosen investments."

If Langstrom hears the pause, he seems to make nothing of it, and presses doggedly on, "Oh yes, well, only half of what he brings to the table is financial, of course. It's the _name_ that's really going to sell it."

Even if she's at slightly less than her sharpest, Penelope still has enough of an edge to realize where this is going. "Naturally," she murmurs, half to herself, and waits for the inevitable question.

"Now, I know what you're thinking—"

Penelope doubts that very much.

"—Is it too late for me to get in on the ground—aha, or shall I say, the _ocean_ —floor of this new and exciting endeavour from Fischler Industries? Well, _worry not_ your ladyship, because—"

Before he can finish the sentence, he's interrupted by a melodic chime from the compact in Penelope's purse, and for the first time since she landed in Auckland, Penelope's smile is suddenly one of pure, radiant joy. In the name of good manners, she'd obligingly had her comm silenced for the duration of her time with Fischler, all incoming calls from almost all sources filtered to her messaging service—except for one. This one, the one she's been waiting for. And the sweet, bell-toned sound from her purse belongs to someone she's been absolutely _aching_ for, in more than just the figurative sense of the word.

"Oh, excuse me," Penelope says brightly, unable to hide just how welcome the interruption is, as her hand darts into her purse and retrieves her little silver compact. "Just a moment, I've been expecting this."

"By all means," Fischler answers, though it's impossible to miss the flash of irritation at having his pitch interrupted. Penelope is delighted by how little she cares, as she flips her compact open.

What she'd been expecting was a message from Gordon, letting her know that he was making his way to New Zealand, and just when exactly she could expect him to be at the hotel room. What she _hadn't_ expected was a message with no text, and only an attached image file. She opens this discreetly, with her compact cradled in the palm of her hand.

It is not, as she'd expected, a message to let her know it's time to gently disengage from Fischler and Fischler Industries, and start making her way across town, because Gordon's on his way to Auckland. Instead, he's sent a simple selfie, so well taken that she feels as though she's actually being _seen_ by the pair of big brown eyes looking up at her. And there's a pleasant little flutter of anticipation in her chest, at the sight of the hotel room card key he's got between his first and second fingers, a tremendously unsubtle sort of gesture to go along with a certain sort of smile, and the context clue provided by a backdrop of rumpled white hotel room bedsheets.

"I'm terribly sorry," Penelope says abruptly, and doesn't mean it even a little bit. She manages to tear her gaze away from her compact after one last lingering moment and snaps it sharply shut, to prevent any further distraction. She stands, and for the first time today, she towers over Fischler, who hasn't gotten up from behind his desk, staring up at her in mild surprise. "I'm afraid I have to go."

* * *

She gets another message once her cab is halfway to her destination, and it reminds her that she hadn't actually taken the time to reply to the first one. She'd been too busy making her exit, complete with insincere apologies and wafer thin promises to get in touch with Fischler again, regarding his many _fascinating_ endeavours. She'd declined his offer of the CARRR's services, and had instead summoned a private taxi, with the promise of an extra generous fare for clever circumvention of Auckland's rush hour. It's late afternoon, nearly four o'clock when Penelope's compact chimes again, and it's another textless image.

This time Gordon's gone for the in-front-of-the-hotel-room's-bathroom-mirror style of selfie, and for how photogenic he can be when he seems to put his mind to it, it's not hard to understand IR's blanket ban on personal social media. Penelope knows from experience that a media presence of any sort leads to a following with certain unsavory edges, and none of the boys need _that_.

Still. She wonders at how he's gotten _this_ good at taking this sort of picture. She wonders how many times he's done this sort of thing with someone else.

Best not to think about that.

The image he's sent is cropped from the height of the bathroom counter top; from just below the brown belt holding up a pair of slim-cut, goldenrod coloured chinos, paired with a touchably soft blue t-shirt and the braided leather bracelets and diver's watch she's grown to associate with Gordon's wrists. His blond hair is lightly touseled, and once again he seems to know just _exactly_ how to look at the camera, in such a way as to contrive the feeling of his gaze upon her.

Gordon's picture makes her think she should send one of her own back in return, but this demands the retrieval of her actual compact, in order to determine just exactly how frightful she must look, after her very long day.

Preliminary assessment determines that she could certainly look _worse_ —and Penelope is fortunate to be well practiced in the matter of touching up her makeup in the back of a moving vehicle, while her cab driver steals occasional glances in her direction. Penelope ignores this, and resolutely goes about her business with powder and pouf, lipstick and rouge. By the time she's reapplying a light touch of mascara to her eyelashes, they're already pulling up outside her hotel, and it seems silly to take a selfie. She takes one anyway, once she's dispensed with the cab and its fare, with the hotels glossy double doors and lighted sign framed artfully in the background. She's chosen a sleek little boutique hotel on the waterfront this time, more chic and modern than the one she'd chosen in Paris.

She breezes through the hotel lobby to the concierge's desk, and the hotel is of sufficient quality that her arrival is anticipated, and she's greeted promptly and professionally and sent on her way with her room key in a matter of moments, directed to the elevator. It's not the penthouse this time, but it's still one of the hotel's more expensive suites, with a private balcony facing the water and a small lounge separate from the bedroom. Penelope doesn't know how long they'll have together, but she knows that at the very least, they'll be comfortable.

She's alone in the elevator as the doors slide closed, and allows herself a moment to lean against the back wall and close her eyes, giving in to the gentle vertigo of the eight storey ascent, the disruption of inertia and the associated moment of slight dizziness.

It's been an agonizingly long day, but Penelope remains triumphant in the knowledge that it will all have been worth it. The idea had first occurred to her, lying alone in bed in the earliest dim grey light of a rainy English morning, almost a full twenty-four hours ago. From there, her day had been divided nearly into thirds, because she'd just decided that it _had_ to happen, and gone about making it so. Following the seven hours between planning and execution, she's had to endure seven hours of commercial air travel followed by another seven hours of Langstrom Fischler's absolute inanity, all while traipsing about in a pair of four inch heels—but it's going to be _worth it_.

There's a soft chime as the elevator reaches the appropriate floor, and there's another little moment of dizziness, but it passes as soon as she steps out of the elevator and onto the solid floor of the eighth floor hallway. The hotel decor is all bright colours and bold patterns, sleek and modern furniture and fittings. It occurs to her, idly, as she makes her way down the carpeted hallway with her suitcase trailing behind her, that if the hotel she'd chosen in Paris was all refined, old world elegance to suit her personality, then this one is a better reflection of Gordon's.

Within fifteen feet of the door, she finally allows herself to give in to the upswell of giddy excitement, the knowledge that he's just _there_ , just like he said he would be, waiting for her. There's no longer an entire world between them, but only a few more feet, and then only a hotel room door, with the number 803 in a modern san-serif typeface on the door. Penelope feels her heartbeat quicken slightly as she passes her keycard above the scanner by the door, and hears the soft click of the lock disengaging.


	27. in and out

The lock clicks softly and even though he's been waiting for her, Gordon suddenly has to pretend like he hasn't been awkwardly pacing the room, waiting for just this exact moment. He freezes in the middle of the carpet, halfway turned towards the door, and stuffs his hands in his pockets for lack of anything to do with them.

He should've contacted her sooner, as soon as he'd landed in Auckland. He should've dressed better than just a t-shirt and chinos. He should've brought flowers or wine or something. He should've decided to take off his shoes—a pair of tomato-red hightops with the tongues lolling out and the neon pink laces only halfway done-up—because the tendency to keep his shoes on indoors is one of those obviously American traits that he's only recently started to get self-conscious about.

There's no reason to be nervous. It's just Penny.

—Except who is he kidding, she never has been and never will be _just_ Penny.

The door opens, and even knowing what to expect, even when the last picture he has of her is only about three minutes old—a rare, hastily snapped candid with the wind catching her hair and the late afternoon sunlight in her eyes that he's pretty sure he'll treasure forever—she's still just about heartstopping in person.

Her white and navy ensemble makes his own semi-random assembly of Tracy-Island-Casual look particularly slapdash, because she's just absolutely flawless in even just a simple skirt and blouse, a pair of white peeptoe heels with glinting silver fittings. With the way she walks into the room, these are just about impossible to miss. But more than any of that, it's just that she's _there_ , beautiful and immediate and real, once again.

The last time they reunited like this, it was in Paris, beneath the darkness of a winter sky, with the lights of a city skyline glittering in the distance. Last time she'd been on the tarmac wrapped up in inky black, and she'd waited for him to come to her, leaning up against the hood of a sleek little sports car, coolly expectant. Now it's a brightly lit and brightly coloured hotel room high above a beautiful, sunlit and summery warm city. Now she crosses the room before he can even say anything, abandoning her bag by the door and barely pausing to push it closed behind her. He hears the latch click softly, but she's already in his arms by then, and anything he might've said to greet her is stifled by the insistent press of her lips against his, the way her body is suddenly so close that even a just a hundred and ten pounds of her is nearly enough to make him stagger.

Nearly.

When she stops—and it's a good few moments before she stops—it's only because her breath catches and she's forced to draw back, to drop down from wavering slightly on the tips of her toes and back onto the dubious solidity of her perilously high heels. She's stays close enough that he feels the deep breath she takes to steady herself, and his hand at the small of her back slides up her spine, even as her fingers tighten slightly where they rest against his other arm.

"Hiya," he starts, and in the time he had to wait for her, he _should've_ tried to figure out what exactly he planned to say when she arrived, not that it even the wittiest repartee would've held up against the way she'd kissed him. Still. "How was—"

The pads of her first two fingers press against his lips before he can get any further, and her voice is soft and sultry and appealingly almost _stern_ as she tells him, "No. No, my darling, none of that. No talking, I promise, we've nothing to talk about. Not now. Not after what happened last time. Later, darling. _After_."

There are very few people on the planet for whom Gordon will immediately shut up and do exactly as he's told, but Penelope Creighton-Ward is one of them. She's probably at the top of the list. Her intent is unambiguous, and there's a familiar intensity about her, as she leans into him again, her lips soft and her mouth wet as she kisses his neck. One of her hands has buried itself in a fistful of his hair, and the other has found its way beneath the hem of his t-shirt (cerulean blue, with an artfully faded logo declaring his allegiance to Lucky! brand jeans), and her fingers are as cool against the skin of his stomach as her breath is warm against his throat. The shiver that follows her touch is entirely involuntary.

This has happened before. This happened on just the other side of her bedroom door, only she'd known exactly where she was going, then. It's only been a couple minutes, she's only just gotten here. She doesn't quite have the lay of the land yet. So when she pauses again, for just a moment, Gordon easily and obligingly sweeps her off her feet into an effortless cradle carry. Less useful during rescue work than one might suppose. Surprisingly useful in this specific scenario, especially when one benches about two-twenty and one's girlfriend weighs about half that. Penelope gasps as he gets a proper grip on her, but his arms are solid behind her knees and around her back, and she relaxes almost immediately, clasping her hands around the back of his neck.

The bed isn't far. Even in a hotel room divided between a lounge and a private bedroom, it's not more than a dozen feet through the bedroom door, and she weighs just about nothing, really. Gordon sits down at the edge of the bed with her already in his lap. The fingers of his left hand curl around the nape of her neck, his thumb pressing lightly against the ridge of her jaw, tilting her face upwards. Her legs are bare from the knees down, and his right hand flounders momentarily beneath the deceptively full hem of her skirt, and the devilishly tight underskirt beneath this, before slipping beneath the silky smooth fabric. His fingertips roam gently over the curve of her thigh, and she starts to kiss him again, her eyes closed, with a more breathless urgency now, not that anything about this encounter so far has seemed anything less than breathlessly urgent.

The very smallest voice in the back of Gordon's head suggests that _maybe_ he might want to think about telling her to slow down—but it's the only dissenting opinion in a whole chorus of others. Now that she's here, he wants her with mind and heart and whatever passes for the rational equivalent of a soul, wherever exactly it is that his love for her comes from—to say nothing of the unmistakable sensation of sweet, impatient desire. Her fingers are clasped around a handful of his tshirt, and he's finally managed to catch up to the rhythm of the way she's been kissing him, and started to kiss her back in earnest.

And for a few moments it's simple and passionate and thoughtlessly perfect. It's as perfect as things have ever been between them, in the few, rare moments they've stolen since their lives truly began to overlap. Everything about her feels so familiar, for as rarely as he's gotten to hold her, she just feels _right_ in his arms.

But not yet familiar enough for him to notice immediately, when things start to be just that little bit wrong.

She makes the softest, faintest sort of sound, a tiny little moan of breath. Her lips part slightly against his, and she stops kissing him back. Her eyes have been closed, but her dark eyelashes flutter for a moment, and then don't open again. The fingers that had wrapped into a fist around his shirtfront start to slacken, but it's not until her grip loosens completely and her hand falls limply into her lap that Gordon realizes anything's even happened.

He freezes up at the realization, just for a second, but it's enough time for her to slump lifelessly forward, her face dropping to his shoulder as her body falls against his chest. For as strong as Gordon is, she seems suddenly heavy in his arms, as the deadweight of anyone's body would be after an abrupt loss of consciousness.

"Pen? ...Penelope?"

The little voice from the back of his head suddenly shouts down everything else, because it's the voice that belongs to a bedrock of medical training. It starts to tally up everything there'd been worth noticing, since she'd first come sauntering into the room. The coolness of her hands, her slight shortness of breath, the way she'd been almost unsteady on her feet when she'd first leaned against him. The way he'd thought, for just the briefest moment at the sight of her face, that she looked a little pale, before dismissing it as just the difference between her complexion and his.

The rest of his brothers are all trained EMTs, but for reasons both practical and personal, Gordon had gone that one step further and become an actual full-fledged paramedic, with another two years' worth of training, reupped and recertified on an annual basis. He's been hardwired with the ability to read situations like this with an immediate, natural fluency and to react like a professional, even though the unprofessional part of him has spun right up into borderline panic.

From the edge of the bed, it's easy enough to lower her gently to the mattress, carefully cradling her neck, though he has no reason to suspect anything like serious injury in the time since she'd arrived. Nothing's happened since then—or nothing he would've expected to cause something like this. She'd been fine when she came in.

She's emphatically _not_ fine now, breathing so shallowly that he has to put a hand against her chest to feel it rise and fall. When his fingertips go reflexively to her wrist in search of a pulse, he finds it sluggish beneath cool skin as he counts each beat of her heart against the motion of the second hand on his watch. Lifting her hand in the bright light through the bedroom window, for the first time he notices the colour of her veins, pale blue as they trace their way up the inside of her wrist, to get lost among the love and life and heart lines in the print of her palm.

The paramedic part of him is worried about her heart rate and her breathing and the coldness of her hands—and her feet, it turns out. As he carefully sets about a cursory examination from head to toe, he finds the the curve of her ankle beneath his palm is just as cold to the touch as her hands are. This sets off a whole other host of worries about circulation, nerve damage. Training dictates elevating her legs above the level of her heart, her ankles braced against his shoulder while he watches her, waiting. Doing so, it seems only sensible to gently remove her shoes, so as not to risk poking one of his eyes out with a Givenchy stiletto heel.

These are surprisingly heavy and impractically high, five inch heels with a half-inch platform, and they thud dully on the carpet when he drops them on the floor. It might be the sound that causes Penelope to stir, draws his attention immediately back to her and he shifts his grip from her wrist to hold her hand properly. He'd glanced at his watch as he'd taken her pulse, and it's just less than a minute since she'd first flickered out. Her eyes open again, blank and unfocused—but only briefly. Her head turns, but only to fall more heavily against the duvet, and when her fingers twitch against his, her grip is so weak that the movement feels barely voluntary.

And up until the moment when her hand goes limp in his, he'd been doing okay, running on auto-pilot. He'd done everything correctly, done everything right. All that hardwired training, the whole half-decade of hands-on experience in crisis situations, and even the constantly running stream of rational, realistic information about the fact that this is probably just a fainting spell, brought on by a long day in a strange climate after extended travel—it all falls suddenly flat against a surge of anxiety and empathy and good old fashioned _fear_ that twists through him, rare and unfamiliar. There's a natural detachment inherent to a first responder's first response, but it suddenly fails him—because it's _her_. It's Penny, and she looks so pale and fragile and still, vulnerable in a way she's just not supposed to be, and he _hates_ it.

It's fully another agonizing minute before she starts to come around properly, and Gordon gently lowers her legs to rest on his lap instead of against his shoulder, puts a comforting hand on her knee as she blinks a few times and draws a shaky deep breath. Her eyes open and her gaze drifts around the room, mostly around the region of the vaulted ceiling. Her shoulders shift slightly as she starts to sit up, and then immediately thinks better of it, before he needs to intervene. "Easy, Pen," he tells her softly, balling up all the stress and anguish that the last two minutes have caused, and stashing these emotions deep down, where they won't get in the way of an ongoing medical assessment. "Babe, you hearing me? Penny?"

This gets her attention, and her blue eyes fix him with a properly focused stare, and then a slow, confused sort of smile. "Gordon, darling. There you are," she says, as though he's gone anywhere. He hasn't, and he isn't planning to. She lifts her hand at this, holding it out for him to take. He does so promptly, sandwiching her fingers between his palms. Her skin is still chillingly cold to the touch and Gordon still doesn't like it, but has to muscle past another churning twist of anxiety in order to remain upbeat and reassuring, and do some preliminary triage.

"Yeah, hi. Pen, honey, you just blacked out for, like, a solid two minutes."

Her smile fades slightly and her other hand goes to her forehead, passing lightly over her eyes as she closes them again with a sigh. "Oh," is her only answer, faint and rather discouraged.

Gordon squeezes her hand, and carefully moves his fingers to the point of her pulse in her wrist, unsure if she'll notice. Even without counting, he can feel that her heartrate has picked up slightly, no longer worryingly slow. Her colouring seems better too, bloodflow improving now that she's lying down. "It's okay," he tells her, though the part of his brain that spent two years chewing its way through medical textbooks is helpfully listing all of the most frightening reasons why an otherwise healthy twenty-seven year old woman passes out without warning. "You just chill for a little bit, Penny, okay? How're you feeling?"

Penelope sighs at this, and though her eyes are still closed, at least it's plainly evident that she's still conscious. "Dizzy," she answers eventually.

"Yeah, that's not surprising. Don't try to get up, just gonna rest for a few minutes, okay?"

"Mm."

He hasn't let go of her wrist, taking a quiet kind of comfort as her pulse continues to normalize—but her hand twists, and she tangles her fingers in the bracelets he wears; a thick cuff of braided black paracord out of practical habit, and a pair of beaded leather cords procured as the result of a vaguely surferish affectation. Penny tugs at his wrist. "Come here," she insists. "I'm cold, come here."

Bossiness is probably a good sign.

It's not what a paramedic would do, but the boyfriend part of his brain initiates a manual override, and there's no other choice but to lie down on his side next to her. He pulls her close against his chest as she turns towards him, kissing her forehead and stroking her hair, and she nestles her face against his shoulder with a sigh.

"This is dreadfully embarrassing," she murmurs, and while she's probably still feeling weak and a little disoriented, it doesn't stop her lips from brushing against his throat again, or one of her knees from teasing its way between his, as she cuddles closer still. "Really."

"Nah," Gordon tells her, reassuring. "Kinda my job. Do you remember how you were feeling when you first came in? What's the last thing you remember? Any dizziness, numbness, vision changes? How's your head?"

"Fine," she answers, ignoring the rest of his questions and dismissive of the one she'd answered, and once again one of her hands finds its way to his bare skin, slipping beneath the hem of his t-shirt. Her hands are still cool, it's not like he can blame her for wanting to warm them up. "You're very warm."

"Are you still feeling cold? Is it like, full body chills, or is it in specific places? D'you think—"

" _Shh_ ," she chides, interrupting the interrogation, with another soft sigh. "Stop."

That shuts him up, and he feels instantly self-conscious about the barrage of medical questions, and tries to imagine what a regular, non-medically trained boyfriend would do in this scenario. The only thing he _really_ wants to do is just hold her, so that seems like it'll suffice for now. He kisses her forehead again and rubs a hand up and down her back, comforting.

Her admonishment was enough to stifle the commentary from the tiny paramedic in the back of his head for a little while, but it starts up again with alacrity after only a few minutes. Gordon gently brushes her hair away from her face, and at that Penelope lifts her head slightly, opens her eyes to look at him, expectant. He takes it as permission to ask a few more questions.

"Can I get you some water, maybe? Have you eaten much today, had much to drink? Can I see your hand a sec?"

Gordon sits up, takes her hand again as he does. He's always loved her hands, though they feel especially delicate and dainty as he gently pinches the skin on the back of her hand, just below the ridge of her knuckles, watches it snap instantly back. Turning her palm upward, he presses his thumb against the pad of her index fingure, light, quick pressure to the capillaries, watching her skin pale for a moment, then flush back to its natural colour in under a second. He frowns, tentatively ruling out dehydration, but shifting to the edge of the bed anyway, glancing at the empty carafe and glasses on the bedside table. "I'm gonna get you some water. Stay put, okay?"

Penelope nods, and draws herself up in the space he's left empty beside her. It's a king-sized mattress and she looks especially small, curled up in lower the corner of the bed. Gordon gets up and retrieves a glass, then ducks into the master bathroom. This is all sleek and modern, done up in black slate tile with bright chrome fittings. The sink has an annoyingly fashionable waterfall style faucet, carved into the edge of the sink, awkward to fill a glass with. But this isn't the only reason he's stepped away.

His hand dips into his pocket and he pulls out his IR comm, a tougher, bulkier piece of tech than his personal phone. He unlocks it with the press of his thumbprint against the screen, and IR's logo pops up, encircled by a radial menu corresponding to each of his brothers, each of their vehicles, and each of their major comms hubs—Tracy Island, TB5, TI HQ, Creighton-Ward Manor. Gordon hesitates only a moment before tapping the icon for TB5.

The call is answered almost instantly, though it's not John's familiar avatar that appears in hologram in the palm of his hand, but EOS' chosen iconography, a ring of white lights. These rise and fall in time with her prim, synthesized voice voice as she says, "Gordon Tracy. You have ten hours, fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds of downtime remaining. IR's operations will resume at 00:00h Tracy Island Time. Please allow adequate time for your return journey."

Despite her reasonably well-established role in the family business, Gordon still finds EOS a little unsettling. He can't ever quite get past the reality of what she is, can't read the quirks and foibles of her manner as well as Brains or Alan can, and one time she'd actually called him a "fleshpuppet". Gordon just can't quite get over that one, even if she'd said it was only a joke. Given a choice in the matter, Gordon almost always prefers to deal with John. But he's had a week to get used to working with his brother's...partner, and if he adopts a sufficiently brusque and expectant tone, he can usually muscle past any latent awkwardness. "Yeah, no, not calling about that. I need you to cross-reference nearby hospitals and their shortest wait times, and then get me a cab to whichever one's best, about fifteen minutes from now.."

"Are you ill or injured? Biometrics show a recent spike in your heartrate and blood pressure, but I detect no other—"

Gordon cuts her off, sharply. "Not me. Just do it, EOS, please. And don't tell anyone else, all right? It's nothing serious and I don't want anyone freaking out."

"Lady Penelope? I have no biometric data for Lady Penelope. Is she ill or injured? Do you require an ambulance?"

Gordon shakes his head. "No. Just a cab, just to the nearest urgent care or walk-in clinic or whatever will see a patient with an acute concern at short notice. Please."

He expects at least to have to argue with her about her desire to tell John, because if there's something that can be said for EOS, it's that she tends to want to tell John everything—but if this is a consideration, she doesn't mention it at all. Instead there's just a crisp, "FAB. I'll forward you the relevant information and alert you when your driver arrives." And the call disconnects.

Gordon picks up the glass he'd filled with water, and returns to the bedroom.

* * *

a/n: For posterity, this chapter was first posted from the middle of Hurricane Florence in September of 2018. So. You know, don't say I never did nothin' for you.


	28. yes and no

"Who were you talking to?"

She'd heard him, through the half-open bathroom door, but she hadn't been able to make out quite what he'd been saying, and certainly not to whom he'd been saying it. She'd sat up, then, picking herself up from the plush depths of the hotel room duvet. But the motion had set her head swimming dizzily once more, and she'd needed to take a few moments to steady herself, breathing deeply, and had missed hearing anything further.

It's all really very silly.

But it means she's sitting up to ask the question when Gordon comes back with a glass of water and an expression caught between concern and disapproval.

"Pretty sure I said you should probably stay put" he admonishes, frowning. There's a rare, serious cast to his expression, and it's probably not quite the correct moment for Penelope to notice and appreciate how very handsome he can be, when he decides to be serious.

"Were you talking to someone?" she asks again, as he comes over to the bedside and presses the glass of water into her hands. Before she takes a sip, meek and obedient, she persists, "Or was I hearing things?"

He doesn't answer, still so needlessly serious, and reaches for the hand that isn't holding the glass, to take her pulse at the wrist. She would very much prefer it if he had chosen to take her pulse at the neck, his hands warm and gentle against her throat—but beggars can't be choosers. And so she sits, patient and still, nursing her glass of water and watching his face as he tracks her heartbeat against the sweep of the second hand of his watch, his expression intent.

"Did I scare you?" she asks eventually, once it becomes apparent that he's either ignoring her question or he's concentrating too intensely to have heard it. "I must've scared you."

The requisite fifteen seconds pass and Gordon lets go of her wrist, finally looking up to meet her gaze. There's anguish hidden in the handsomeness of his serious face, behind the set of his jaw and the sharpness of his gaze. "Yeah," he says. "Scared would be a word for it."

He's plenty handsome without needing to be worried, and Penelope feels a pang of guilt that she's frightened him, to the point that it shows. She reaches up to put a comforting hand against his chest. "I'm sorry," she says, and means it. "I'm quite all right, though, darling." She means this, too. The dizziness has passed and her head is clearing, and even just a few sips of cold, clear water have helped tremendously. "Really."

His hand comes up to cradle her cheek, and she leans her face affectionately in against his palm, looking up at him with what she hopes is a convincing expression. She gets the idea that he's not paying much attention to her expression, so much as he's peering intently at her eyes, measuring the response of her pupils as he gently turns her face towards the light through the bedroom's floor to ceiling window.

His concern hasn't diminished, and at length he decides to answer her original question, "I was just on the line with TB5. I've got a cab coming, we're gonna go to the hospital, soon as you feel like you're up to it. I don't think I want you standing up just yet."

Penelope blinks at this, drawing away from the touch of his hand, taken aback. "No," she answers, genuinely puzzled. "We will absolutely _not_ be doing anything so thoroughly ridiculous."

His concern wavers into incredulity and then into slight confusion, and Penelope reminds herself how lucky she is that Gordon is so terribly easy to read. He drops his hand from her face as he sits back down beside her. There's a slightly exaggerated patience to the way he explains, as though she hasn't understood his statement and he needs to clarify. "You need to see a doctor. Pen, you were flat unconscious for two minutes straight. Big Book of Rescues says that's a mandatory medical evaluation. We're getting you looked at."

This is ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. "Oh, no; _heavens_ no. Don't be daft." Penelope waves a hand at this, dismissive. It happens to be the hand that's holding the glass of water, and some of this splashes on the floor, because she's perhaps not _quite_ pulled herself back together, just yet. Gordon prudently relieves her of the glass and sets it on the floor. "As though I've never fainted before."

She means to dismiss this as the triviality it is, but it only causes his eyes to widen, has him catch hold of her hand and fold it up between his again, as he demands, "Have you? _Do_ you? Is this a regular thing?"

It isn't, exactly, but it's certainly not the first time it's happened. And Penelope finds herself abruptly irritated by the interrogation. "Is my medical history suddenly your business?" she asks, waspish in a way she doesn't really want to be, though she can't seem to help the sharpness of her voice, so she goes with it and glares at him.

He's still on the backfoot, clearly made uncertain by her tone, but he's at least as stubborn as she is, and he persists, "I mean—right now, specifically in the context that you've just completely blacked out on me for no apparent reason—uh, _yeah_?"

There _are_ reasons, _obviously_ , and if Gordon thinks they aren't apparent, it's because he hasn't realized just what exactly she's had to _do_ to get herself to the other side of the planet. "Well, perhaps it's to do with the fact that I've been awake for nearly twenty-four hours now, in the process of getting myself halfway around the world. To be with _you_. Emphatically _not_ to waste any time going to some _ghastly_ public hospital for no good reason, to sit in a waiting room for hours on end, simply to be told that I've overextended myself, and that really I should have stayed in my _very expensive hotel room_ and tried to _relax_."

"I'll believe that when I hear it from someone with a medical degree."

Penelope stops herself just shy of folding her arms and stubbornly pouting. "Well, you're not going to, because I'm not going anywhere. It's unnecessary."

" _No_ , it's exactly you're _supposed_ to do when something like this happens. Penny, I don't understand why this is an argument," he says, giving in to confusion with a shake of his head and a frustrated sigh.

It's going to be a problem between them, that they haven't learned how to fight with each other yet. Not in this new phase of their relationship, at least. They've argued before, Penelope's sure of that. She has surprisingly fond memories of arguments with Gordon, usually on the job, in whatever the situation was at a time. Usually some disagreement about the best way to solve a problem. He's easily her equal in stubbornness, though he seems reluctant to really argue with her properly, wavering on the border of frustration and confusion. Nothing she's said has convinced him.

Yet.

So she switches tactics abruptly, shifting closer and leaning against him again, so that Gordon's arm automatically wraps around her shoulders. "It really needn't be," Penelope says, softening her voice, coaxing and cajoling as she puts a hand on his chest. The fabric of his t-shirt is cotton-jersey and appealingly thin, and she traces her fingertips slowly down his sternum, so that she feels him draw breath beneath the lightness of her touch. "I understand that you're worried, darling, and I'm so very sorry that I've worried you—but don't be. Please. I feel much better. It's just that I've just had such a dreadfully long day getting here, and it was all a little too much, too quickly. I was impatient."

That teases a huff of breath out of him, a soft little chuckle, acknowledgment of the obvious. " _Hah_. Yeah, I'll say. Nearly knocked _me_ flat on _my_ ass."

"You can hardly blame me." She has a natural edge here, though it seems almost unfair to press her advantage. But with her head against his shoulder, she can feel the warmth of his body, and it's almost beyond her control to move her hand from his chest to the curve of his thigh. A slow, deep breath draws the scent of him into her lungs, bodywash or cologne or whatever it is, some appealing, intoxicating blend of citrus and sandalwood that she hasn't noticed or appreciated before now, and wants to grow a great deal more familiar with. Lifting her face from where her head rests against his shoulder, she brushes a soft kiss against his throat, in the same moment her fingers tighten slightly against the cotton twill of his pant legs, such that she can feel the flesh beneath. "Can you?"

None of this is even remotely subtle. Penelope's an absolute master of subtlety, but it seems unnecessary here.

Gordon shifts uncomfortably where he sits beside her, almost as though he wants to pull away. There's the beginning of a protest in his voice, as he starts, "Pen—"

" _Shh_. Shush." She interrupts another kiss to his throat to cut him off, "It's just that I _want_ you, darling. I've _been_ wanting you. Ever since Paris. Since before then, since I had you last. You can't imagine how much."

 _That_ gets an actual, startled little laugh, incredulous disbelief that she'd claim something so patently absurd. " _Uh_. Kinda got an inkling. You know, just a bit of an idea. Give a guy some credit."

"We've already wasted so much time," Penelope continues, insistent. She's gone beyond coaxing and cajoling and is well into wheedling now, and she knows it; knows that her objectives can't be anything less than absolutely, _utterly_ transparent—but she doesn't especially care. As though to properly prove that she's feeling much, _much_ better, she pushes herself up, insinuates her way back into his lap, wraps her arms around his neck. There's still resistance in him, reluctance, and though his hands have found their way to her waist, he might just be holding her to keep her steady, out of fear that she's going to keel over again. She has no plans to. She closes her eyes as she lifts her chin slightly, tilts her face upward to press a kiss against his lips.

And Gordon lets her—and he kisses her back, even—but only once. Then his hands move to close around her arms, pulling them down and away—a gentle but firm reminder of how much stronger than her he is—and then he pushes her back. Firmly, decisive. And for the first time, as Penelope opens her eyes again, she realizes she can't read his expression. Something the warmth of his agate-brown eyes has grown distant, closed off. All she can tell, as silent moments begin to trickle between them, is that he's not happy. Not like she'd wanted him to be. For some reason this manifests as a flash of irritation.

She's not about to give him the satisfaction of demanding an explanation, but it doesn't matter, because it's only a moment more before he gives her one. "I'm trying to decide," he starts, and if his face betrays nothing, his voice belies a frustration she's never heard from him before, not even when they've argued before, not even when the problems they'd faced were problems of life and death. This is different. New. "—I'm trying to decide if I'm offended that you think this is gonna work."

Penelope feels herself freeze, feels tension drawing along her spine, like a finger hooked around a harp string, pulling taut. " _Excuse me_ —" she starts, feeling anger flush into her like heat, blood rising to her face, but he cuts her off.

"—'Cuz, see, my _other_ option is to be more freaked out than I already am, because you're really, _really_ not acting like yourself. And since our ride is gonna be here in about five minutes, and since you seem to be feeling up to it, we're _going_ to the _hospital_ , Penelope. Something's wrong; you're not yourself."

It's still concern, then, masquerading as sternness—the way _he's_ not acting remotely like himself either, suddenly pushy and domineering, when she's grown to rely on him being tractable and compliant. Especially in this particular aspect.

Further to the point, he's _wrong_ —entirely wrong—because Penelope feels more entirely and completely herself than she has all day. She's spent the past twenty-four hours in dogged pursuit of her goal, has wasted an enormous amount of time lying to Parker, which had in turn trapped her into an _utterly_ unnecessary eight hours with Langstrom Fischler, smiling through her quiet loathing of the man. She's flown halfway around the world, spent hours of time that weren't hers to spend. She's spent the entire day feeling _false_ , in pursuit of that fleeting, addictive feeling of _realness_ that Gordon seems to bring out of her, uniquely, in a way that she's not sure anyone else ever has.

But to have him deny her, at the very apex of her want—her _need_ for him—beneath the rising flare of her anger, there's a flash of pain. This is deep and sharp and as real as she wants to be, though she doesn't _really_ mean it when she lashes back with, "And how would _you_ know?"


	29. hue and cry

The worst part is that his initial impulse is anger.

And he's only angry because he's afraid, way deep down, a way that he isn't, usually. He's afraid because there's something wrong with her— _obviously_ wrong with her, first with the fainting and then with the strange shift in her attitude, and now with the meaner than usual streak of meanness—and because he knows he can't do anything for her. Can't make her do anything she doesn't want to, either. All he's got is the hope that he can talk her around to what he knows is the right course of action, though his impulse is to snap and snarl and flare right back at her, for being so ridiculously stubborn, to the point that she's putting herself in danger.

But he can't, of course. Because it's Penelope.

And he _does_ know her. Whether _she_ knows it or not, Gordon knows her well enough to be madly in love with her, and to be sure that something's not right.

"I know there's something wrong," he answers, stifling the anger and the fear and especially the way her question had stung— _how would_ you _know?_ "Penny, come on—"

"I'm _fine_ ," she insists, and pushes away from him. "I've _told you_ , I'm _fine_."

She stands before he wants her to, gets to her feet and moves away. Gordon starts to reach for her, but stops, catches himself in the act of snagging her wrist, so that his fingertips only just brush against her skin. If her hands hadn't been so cold as she'd touched him, there's the possibility she could've convinced him. She'd been _very_ convincing. He doesn't like to think about that, doesn't like to think that the prospect of getting to be with her again could've been enough to override his common sense. He knows he's supposed to be better than that.

Penelope steps away, stalking to the window overlooking Queen's Wharf. She stands silhouetted in front of the floor-to-ceiling expanse of the sky. It makes her look smaller than ever, and makes him feel hulking and awkward as he stands up, takes a few hesitamt steps towards her. In response to his approach she folds her arms tightly across her chest and refuses to look at him, staring fiercely out the window, her gaze fixed upon the innocent goings-on of late-afternoon around the waterfront, none of which are worthy of her apparent fury.

It's so easy to forget that Penelope's tiny, really. With her shoes still abandoned by the foot of the bed, she's over half a foot shorter than he is, slight and delicate. He glances at his watch—it had been 4:17PM NZST when he'd first taken her pulse, and the moment seems to have frozen itself in his memory—but it's nearing half past the hour, now. It feels like longer, and yet he can still see the imprint she'd left on the plush duvet, and can't _stop_ seeing the way she'd looked so small and still and fragile and made him feel sick and frightened inside. Despite everything, these are better emotions to hold onto than anger, a better motivation to try and convince her that he's right.

"Pen, please. I'm not—I don't _want_ to fight about this, why're we fighting about this?" It comes out more like pleading than he wants it to, but it's still better than shouting at her.

"Because you're trying make me do something I don't want to do," Penelope informs him, coldly, turning away from the window to glare at him. "Something _wholly_ unnecessary."

Gordon's not sure how often he can repeat the truth without it making the slightest impact, but he tries again anyway, "But, it's—you were just _gone_ , Penny. You went right out, _fast_ , and then you were barely breathing and your pulse dropped, your blood pressure—your hands were like _ice_ , they're _still_ like ice. You scared the hell outta me; you're _scaring_ the hell outta me. This kinda thing doesn't just happen without a reason, and—"

"The _reason_ is everything I've done to _get here_." There's an imperious little stamp of her foot, which would be adorable if she weren't so angry—an emotion _she_ clearly has no compunction about—and her hands drop into fists at her sides. Her glare moves up a level in severity and becomes an absolute glower. "I'm _exhausted_ ," she continues, apparently indifferent to the fact that she's not helping her case, and that the little paramedic in the back of Gordon's brain is helpfully adding _fatigue_ to her growing list of symptoms, along with _irritability_ and _altered mental status_. "I've done _so much_ to be with you, because it's been _awful_ not to be. I _want you_ ; I've _missed you_."

She says this like it's an accusation, as though it's his fault somehow and she's simply _furious_ with him about it.

Somehow, something about her anger seems almost separate from her, and lends the unmistakable sensation of being trapped in a room with something primally dangerous and vanishingly rare. Seldom seen and _never_ captured, evidence of Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward displaying one of life's uglier emotions.

Only she's nothing less than breathtaking when she's angry, absolutely beautiful in her intensity. She radiates fury, blazes with it. At her back, the late afternoon sun flashes bright gold off the waters of the harbour behind her. It's impossible for Gordon not to stare at her, captivated, and impossible to figure out just what he's supposed to say, when she's said something like _that_ in a tone like _this_.

"I missed you too," he answers, softly, automatically, as his heart starts to catch up to his brain, and the way he feels about the whole situation starts to bubble up and boil over, out of his control. "I—god, Pen, you _know_ I've missed you."

It feels like a miracle when this seems to work, as some of the wrath dies out of her, her posture losing some of its rigidity, her chin lifting slightly, challenging. There's still heat in her voice and fire in her eyes as she declares, "I haven't come halfway around the world for you _not_ to fuck me."

There's an explicit streak that runs through her ladyship, and Gordon still hasn't gotten used to it. There's an awful, rising sensation of dread that, with the way this conversation is going, has him wondering if he might actively be losing his chance. "Yeah, I got that," he answers, keeping his voice quiet and steady and even, though he has to drop his gaze to the carpet, because he's not sure if he can look at her any longer. It's starting to feel like staring at the sun. He fixes his eyes on the repeating sequence of diamonds and squares that pattern the carpet, scuffs his feet against the pile of the rug. "You haven't exactly been subtle."

Another flare, and her voice rises as she snaps, "I shouldn't _need_ to be subtle! I _hate_ to be subtle; my entire _life_ is an endless stream of _subtlety_. Do you have even the first idea of just how much impenetrable artifice I have to wade through on a day to day basis? Just how much of my own life I need to deliberately manufacture? All the _endlessly_ tedious obfuscation, Gordon, it's _exhausting_. I _hate it_."

He can't help but look up at the way she's said his name, the way her breath had drawn sharply at the end of her little tirade, masking the break in her voice. And now the fire in her eyes is drowned by the brightness of tears, as she continues, repeating herself, "I want you; I _need_ you. I've come all this way. Please, I should be able to say so. I never get to be honest with anyone, but somehow it's easier with you, and so I'm _trying_."

Her arms wrap around her chest again, but it's not anger any longer. Now she's holding herself, as her head bows and her shoulders start to shake as she starts to cry in earnest. Big, brokenhearted sobs without restraint or repression, a level of emotion he's never seen from her before, never even _imagined_. It's so sudden and strange and unfamiliar that he winds up frozen where he stands, just staring at her, completely unsure what he's supposed to do, until she finds her voice once more—

"Please," she says again, and when she manages to lift her head and look at him, it's with such broken desperation in her eyes that he snaps out of it immediately, crosses the room to gather her into an embrace, fierce and protective.

"Oh—god, Pen. Just…c'mon, c'mere," he murmurs, as she buries her face against his shoulder and wraps her arms around his chest and continues to sob her heart out. He kisses her forehead and strokes her hair and makes empty, helpless sounding promises that it's all going to be all right, whatever it is. He can't tell if any of it's helping at all, because he has absolutely no experience in the area of Penelope, crying. It's so difficult to even imagine that he wonders briefly if _anyone_ really does, but that thought threatens to break _his_ heart, a little bit, so he just holds her tighter and kisses her again.

It seems like a long time before she starts to calm down, starts to get her breath back and to steady herself again, though she makes no move to draw away, and he's not about to let her go. There's a big damp patch on his t-shirt, not that it matters, except as a measurement of exactly how much she's had to cry about.

Eventually she takes a deep breath and finds her voice again, gone all raw and quiet and subdued, and says, "I'm sorry I'm not myself. It's just been such a long day, and we'll have so very little time before we're apart again. Please don't make me go anywhere else. Darling, I'm _so_ tired. It took _forever_ to get here, but I wanted so badly to be with you. Please, can't we just stay?"

It was almost easier when it was an argument, because between the crying and her apparent exhaustion and now the _pleading_ , he could _almost_ be talked around to calling it off, to staying in and curling up in bed and seeing if they can't find a movie to agree on, on the condition that she promises to see her doctor just as soon as she's back in England—but his conscience won't allow it. And he's not sure he'd trust her to keep her word. He's starting to get the chilling sense that Penelope's a little more cavalier about her health than he might otherwise prefer. That's going to need to be dealt with.

"It won't take long," he promises finally, lamely, because he can only hope that it's true. "And we'll come right back. But I'm not—I _can't_ —Penny, if we don't get you checked out properly, all I'm gonna do is worry about you. Like—if you think you're feeling better, then…that's great for _you_ , I guess. But I'm all locked into paramedic mode now, and I can't turn that _off_. Please, Pen—for me? Would you do it for me?"

This earns a tremulous, resigned little sigh, and she's still atypically subdued as she asks, "If… _if_ we go—and I still don't _want to_ —but, if we did…would you stay with me?"

The fact that this is even a question is absolutely and entirely baffling to Gordon, because he'd assumed it was a given. But it seems like positive progress that she's even willing to consider it, and so his answer is earnest and affirmative, "Pen, honey, of course I'm gonna—I _said_ 'we', didn't I? _We're_ going to the hospital. I'll stay with you as long as they'll let me; as long as you want me to. Babe, of _course_ I will."

Her arms around him tighten slightly, and she laments, "I _hate_ hospitals."

"Me too. They're the worst,'" Gordon tells her, fervent in his agreement. Deep down, he hopes she never understands just exactly how much. "Necessary, though," he adds, just for good measure. Just so she knows he hasn't changed his mind. "It won't be so bad. Just get you looked at and checked out real quick, and then it'll be over. And we'll come straight back."

"It's _such_ a waste of time. You're going to leave me again."

"I've got 'til midnight to get back to the island. We've still got time," Gordon assures her, though a glance at his watch over her shoulder is a reminder that she's not exactly wrong—and the flick of his wrist brings up a message from EOS on the integrated comm display: that their driver is waiting for them downstairs. If Gordon had gotten his way to begin with, they'd have been headed to the hospital ten minutes ago. It's time to get this show on the road. "Our ride is here."

Still, Penelope tries one last time, lifting her face to look up at him, imploring. There are still the last remnants of tears standing in the corners of her big blue eyes. This is basically torture. In some ways Gordon thinks he might he preferred being yelled at. "We could just stay. We could go to bed and we could stay there and just be together and we could _not_ do this. I don't _want_ to do this."

"Pen—"

The slightest edge of irritation creeps back into her voice, accusing. "You've been _so_ terribly tedious about the whole thing."

Tedious is probably a fair assessment. "Just doing my job," he answers, though he doesn't imagine that this is much of a defense.

It's not. "The last thing in the _world_ I wanted you to do tonight is your _job_."

Gordon shrugs, a little guiltily. "Me and my job are kind of a package deal. I can't turn it _off_ , Penny. Especially not when it's you."

With a slight shrug of her shoulders she extricates herself from his arms, drops her hands to take one of his. "I think I told you once—quite a long time ago now—that I didn't need saving." Her hands are warmer now, but still cool against his skin, as her fingers find their way in between his, and she clasps his hand in both of hers. "Perhaps you wouldn't remember."

This is a long-ago moment that's been etched in Gordon's memory, indelible. Of course he remembers. What's surprising is the fact that _she_ does. "No, I do," he answers, and gently squeezes her hand. "Kinda hard to forget."

Penelope sighs one last time, and shakes her head as she finally gives in. "I suppose you're always going to try and save me anyway. I suppose I'd better try and get used to it."

And apparently that settles that.


	30. how and why

With rush hour traffic through downtown Auckland, it's about a twenty minute drive from the hotel she'd chosen to the hospital Gordon has, but at least they're travelling in comfort and style. In the few minutes he had taken to step away into the bathroom, back in the middle of the whole ridiculous incident, somehow he'd contrived to summon a private, properly chauffeured luxury car. When they'd finally gotten down to the hotel's front entrance—not even half an hour after her arrival—their ride had been ready and waiting, low and sleek and probably some flavour of Bentley, though she hadn't gotten a good look at the badge on the back before being ushered into the back seat. It all feels rather like a kidnapping, or would have, if her kidnapper hadn't climbed into the back seat beside her.

And at first the bench seat in the back had seemed small, somehow, compared to FAB-1. It had taken Penelope an embarrassingly long time to realize that the only reason it _feels_ smaller is because she's used to sitting alone. Or, if not quite alone, then with no one for company but Sherbet, who doesn't take up enough room to be worth mentioning.

Gordon is emphatically _not_ a rather runty, twelve-pound little pug, outfitted in a bespoke designer sweater, though he's still approximately as devoted to her as Sherbet is, and at least as affectionate. His right arm lies along the back of the seat, secure around her shoulders, while the other rests on the armrest of the passenger door. He's warm and solid and intensely present beside her, such that she's nestled quite close against his chest, enjoying the scent of whatever body wash or cologne or deodorant it is that makes him smell so absolutely delicious. As they get underway, soft, tastefully restrained jazz plays from the backseat speakers, but sitting as close to him as she is, she pays it absolutely no mind, and instead listens to him breathing.

And this is nice in its own way, she supposes, though after the absolute mortification of the emotional outburst she's just undergone in protest, she'd sooner die than admit it. Penelope's not sure if she can actually remember the last time she genuinely burst into tears; the last time she'd been so deeply frustrated and bitterly disappointed that her usual porcelain facade had cracked and her real and actual emotions had come boiling up to the surface. It's really very tiresome, crying, and she'd been tired to begin with. All she'd wanted was to go to bed, to curl up next to Gordon and just be _loved_ , in every sense of the word, tenderly and gently and with the intimacy and understanding she's craved for _weeks_ now.

But instead all manner of nonsense had happened, and her wants and needs had been summarily denied, and now she's too tired even to be really disappointed any longer. In the aftermath of her outburst, she'd felt rather hollow and disconnected. When Gordon had suggested that she might want to go wash her face and then change her shoes before they headed down to the car, she'd just done as she was told, had been meek and weary and compliant. She'd wiped the slightly smeared mascara from her eyes and then touched up her lipstick, swapped her wickedly high heels for a pair of more sensible ballerina flats. Then she'd let him take her hand and lead her out of the hotel room, into the elevator, through the hotel lobby and into the car he'd already had waiting.

It's a fancy enough car from a sufficiently reputable service that there's a partition between the driver and passenger's compartments. Up until now, Penelope's left it down. Their driver doesn't seem to be the chatty type, which is her preference when it comes to drivers who aren't Parker, but as they slow to a stop at another leisurely Auckland intersection, she decides she's not really interested in his company. Knowing her way around luxury cars as she does, Penelope reaches out and flicks a switch in the central console. There's a low, hydraulic hum as the glass screen slides upward. With the twist of another toggle, it tints into smoky darkness, obscuring the view between the two compartments. In the upper corner, a little red light comes on, indicating that the rear of the vehicle has been discreetly soundproofed, and the dull noise of the city and the traffic around them diminishes.

As she settles back into her seat next to Gordon, Penelope sighs and rests her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes. It's been a tremendously long and ultimately unfulfilling day, and she doesn't like to think about what a waste the next few hours are likely to be, compared to what she'd hoped for. It's all extremely stupid and terribly tedious, and she wishes she'd had the energy to put up more of a fight. Or that her _lack_ of energy had been sufficient reason to convince Gordon that it would've been better to stay.

It doesn't much matter anymore, she supposes.

Still, perhaps the day wasn't a _complete_ waste. They're still together, after all, and will be until he needs to leave, back to the island and the beck and call of the world at large. As the sun begins to set, the day is still brighter and warmer and just _better_ than the day she'd have had in England, which had been solidly grey and rainy and depressing. And even the time she'd spent traipsing around Fischler Industries—while unnecessary as an excuse for getting herself to Auckland—had proved fruitful, as far as discreet reconnaissance can be considered.

With this in mind, Penelope lifts her head from Gordon's shoulder and pokes him in the ribs to get his attention. He's been quiet, rather subdued ever since their argument in the hotel room. Penelope doesn't entirely understand this, considering he'd _won_ , had gotten his way in the end. She'd even surrendered with a reasonable amount of grace, having run out of the energy necessary to sustain any further anger with him. She smiles slightly as he turns his attention from the window and hopes it's at least somewhat reassuring. And she musters just enough brightness and cheer to ask, in an effort to make conversation—

"Do you want me tell you something absolutely _dreadful_ , darling? Something to simply _ruin_ your day?"

Gordon blinks at her and she's suddenly reminded very intensely of Sherbet, and the confused, slightly helpless look that crosses his puppyish features when presented with a complex problem, a question to which the right answer is not immediately apparent. "…I…don't? I don't usually want that? No? No, thank you?"

Penelope shrugs. "Well, you've ruined _my_ day. It only seems fair that I should get to ruin yours."

This gets an incredulous little huff of laughter and a disbelieving shake of his head. "Babe, _my_ day got ruined when you collapsed on top of me for no apparent reason. We are _well_ beyond the threshold of ruining _my_ day. My day doesn't start to get better until I know you're okay."

That's probably fair. Penelope remains undeterred. Encouraged, even. "I can make it worse, though," she promises brightly, and deep down, in the very wickedest depths of her questionably sterling soul, absolutely delights in the prospect. "In fact, one might even say it's my job to do so."

This statement brings about a pause in the conversation, and then Gordon clears his throat and makes a sheepish admission, "D'you know, I have never actually fully and completely understood what your job actually is?"

"Well, if people knew what exactly it was that I do, then I wouldn't be doing it very well." A strand of hair has fallen loose from where it's usually brushed back from her forehead, and Penelope reaches up to tuck it behind her ear as she goes on, "Suffice it to say, what I've learned today is potentially going to be of a tremendous amount of interest to International Rescue. Forewarned is forearmed, after all."

"Well, _now_ you're making me nervous." Gordon grimaces, corrects himself. "More nervous. Nervouser. I was already plenty nervous. Also thanks to you, by the way."

Penelope nods, feigning sympathy as she pats his knee, but really this is just an excuse to put her hand on his knee in the first place, and then leave it there. "I had better just tell you and get it over with."

"I _really_ think you could probably manage _not_ to do that."

He's very, _very_ wrong about that. This is probably growing somewhat antagonistic. Penelope doesn't especially care. "I'll just start and get it over with. _So_. Langstrom Fischler—"

He interrupts her, startled, "Christ, is _that_ where you've been all day? At Fischler's HQ? _Why_?"

"For just a little tiny bit of incidental corporate espionage, since I came all this way," Penelope answers primly, giving his knee a reassuring squeeze and cuddling close against his side. "And precisely so that I could find out what I've found out today, which is that he and Francois LaMere—"

"Oh—god, okay. So it's worse. It's already so much worse than I thought. _Fischler_ and LaMere. Langstrom and _Francois_. The Billionaire Bonehead's Club. A match made in whatever circle of hell is reserved for arrogant _dumbasses_ with more money than goddamn good sense. Langstrom and _LaMere_! It's almost got a horrible kind of a ring to it, doesn't it? Kinda like a death knell."

Penelope smiles to herself. Despite everything, this _is_ making her feel rather better. Gordon can reliably be depended upon for entertaining theatrics. "And I haven't even told you what they're working on yet."

There's a strangled note of protest in his voice as he repeats, "They're _working_ together?"

"—On an undersea hotel," she finishes, with unruffled aplomb.

As close together as they are, this time she actually feels it—the way his entire body tenses, goes absolutely rigid with horror at the very thought. He'd drawn a rather sharp breath and now he exhales it slowly, an already exasperated sigh. " _Jesus_."

"Mmm. I gather Langstrom's meant to be the brains, such as they are, and LaMere is going to be putting his name to the project, to say nothing of fronting the actual finances."

"Where? When?"

Penelope shrugs. Her attention had lapsed rather badly during this particular portion of the tour, and before Langstrom had been able to refresh his pitch, he'd been tragically interrupted. "I'm afraid I don't know, darling. I didn't get a chance to find out, really, because just as he was about to go into detail, _you_ swooped in and saved me, figuratively speaking, and I had to dash away." She lifts her hand from her knee, but only to fondly pat his chest. "I did very much appreciate that."

Gordon just sighs again, shakes his head. "I guess you couldn't answer 'how' and 'for fuck's sake _why_?', either."

She cannot. Even if she had paid attention, these are reliably the sort of details she prefers to pilfer and pillage and simply _steal_ , and then render into the care of those better equipped to understand them, rather than have to apprehend herself. It's not that she _couldn't_ , if she were to put her mind to it, but it reliably seems like more trouble than necessary. "It was something about domes and something about self-sustaining geothermal energy generation and something about a kelp farm and algae burgers, though he tried to feed me one for lunch and it was _nauseating_ and quite put me off even the _thought_ of food for the rest of the afternoon."

That must twig off something, and apparently it's enough to divert him from the prospect of Langstrom Fischler's Undersea Hotel, because she feels him straighten slightly, perking up, and he sounds eagerly suspicious as he asks, "Right. No lunch? Did you eat breakfast? _Do_ you eat breakfast? What _was_ breakfast? …what all _have_ you eaten, today?"

The answers to these questions, in order, are " _Not when algae burgers were the only offering_ ", " _Yes, of_ course _I do, don't be daft_ ", " _a soft boiled egg, half a grapefruit, a slice of brioche, and a double espresso_ ", and " _mostly biscuits and tea from assorted sources_ "—but Penelope's got a natural aversion to being questioned too closely or sharply about anything, even just breakfast, and so none of these answers are the one she gives.

"Don't interrogate me, darling," she says instead, feeling a little surge of irritation sparking back up, and she's possibly a little bit unkind as she continues, "You've gotten your way, we're going to the hospital to _waste_ the rest of our afternoon, and you're going to feel like an absolutely _perfect_ fool by the end of it all."

"Oh?"

"Mm. Like a complete idiot."

"So…not that much different from usual, then?"

There's something about the way he says it, with a sardonic edge to his voice that's outside the usual, and which earns him a swat on his shoulder, as she scolds, " _Stop_ that."

Gordon just chuckles softly, shifts slightly where he sits so that she can rest more comfortably against his chest and pats her head in a manner that comes up just shy of patronizing. "You're the one who said it, babe."

"Yes, but I don't mean it the way _you_ mean it, and you know how I hate it when you do that."

"Exactly how else is a guy supposed to interpret the terms 'absolutely perfect fool' and 'complete idiot', Pen?"

"I mean when we get to the hospital," she clarifies, because apparently it's necessary, "Because this isn't going to be anything of consequence. It's all perfectly explicable. I've been awake since five this morning, _London_ time. I flew nine hours to get here, then spent the rest of the day on my feet, touring Fischler Industries of all the infernal places. I've eaten nothing better than three cookies and half a cup of tea in the past eight hours, because the man tried to poison me with _spirulina_. And besides all that, I've a documented history of anemia and lately I've been rather remiss about my iron supplements."

She feels him tense at that, feels the sharp little intake of breath, before he actually has the temerity to _scold_ her, a note of shocked sternness in his voice as he says, " _Penelope_."

This gets her attention, but probably not in the way he'd prefer, because there's something _intensely_ attractive about the ring of authority in his tone and she puts a hand against his chest to push herself up and get a better look at him. As anticipated, there's something about the way his jaw sets and the way his gaze sharpens that makes him look really, _properly_ handsome.

Not that he _isn't_ , as a general rule, but there's something that lurks behind the facade of his perpetual sunshine smile, his quick and easy laughter, his apparent inclination to take nothing seriously. For her own part, Penelope's aware that if she doesn't go out of her way to smile—to soften her expression and assume the practiced, pretty and palatable neutrality that's expected of her in the public eye—she tends to look rather frosty and unapproachable. Gordon has the opposite problem—but it's undeniable that he's an order of magnitude more handsome when he's serious.

It's probably not good to goad him into _further_ seriousness, but she has nothing much better to do, and she quite likes the little divot that appears between his brows when he frowns at her. "None of that was any of your business, darling," she tells him, before he can scold her any further.

It works, and he shakes his head, disbelieving. "If _that's_ what you're putting yourself through to get out here, then Pen, it is _absolutely_ my goddamn business. Penny, what the _hell_."

"I missed you," she answers placidly, and then defiantly adds, "And it would've been worth it."

" _Not_ the point."

She shrugs, and deep down, in the very wickedest part of her questionably sterling soul, absolutely delights in frustrating him the same way he's frustrated her. " _My_ point is that you should've listened to me. I suppose it will be an object lesson, after we've gone through all this utter nonsense, and I've got absolutely no energy left for anything that would've made the trip worthwhile."

This gets an actual, tiny little _growl_ of frustration; a low, guttural little noise from the back of his throat. "I can't believe we're fighting— _again_ —but I _especially_ can't believe that what we're fighting _about_ is the fact that I _care about you_ and _want you to be okay_."

"I think you'll _actually_ find that we're fighting about your refusal to listen to me when I make my wishes clear to you, but we won't quibble."

"I'm _worried_ about you!"

"And I'm _fine_."

"Chronically anemic and _starving yourself_ is not _fine_ , Penelope!"

Despite appearances, the term "starving herself" is _not_ actually applicable to the current situation—but it does needle over a rather private and intensely personal part of Penelope's history, which Gordon is not yet (and may never be) privy to. It precipitates a rather muddy and unpleasant emotion that flirts briefly with becoming guilt, but settles into diffidence instead, and she waves his concern away as she deflects,"Well, I had _planned_ to get something lovely from room service after I'd had my way with you properly, but we both know _that_ didn't happen." Penelope sighs theatrically and tips her head against his shoulder again, as though this argument is all in fun and not another dizzying peak of this afternoon's emotional roller coaster. "Best laid plans."

Penelope has never actually been on a roller coaster.

So she's not familiar with the way it feels to come to the top of one of those dizzying peaks, and to begin to tip over the edge, as gravity takes over again. As the silence starts to stretch out beyond what might be expected in a playfully flirtatious argument, there's a sudden sense of having gone too far, and realizing it just moments too late, before the precipitous drop ahead.

Gordon shifts beside her, starting to pull away. She feels it when he swallows, though it still takes him another few moments to find his voice, and she's not prepared for the change in his tone once he does. "If that's all you want from me," he starts, and there's something about the way he says it that makes her stomach drop, "then I think maybe when this is all over, me and you probably need to talk."

And the car pulls to a halt in front of the hospital.


	31. water and marbles

He should've known it would be _this_ hospital.

There's nothing especially special about this hospital, at first blush. It's a hospital exactly like a lot of others. It might even be the hospital he would've picked, if he'd picked the hospital himself, but he hadn't. EOS had made whatever arrangements she'd made, and with other things on his mind, Gordon had just trusted her. Their ride (far fancier than the cab he would've called) had brought them right up to the emergency room entrance, and the driver had circled around to open the door on Penelope's side of the car, while Gordon had clambered out on his own, unassisted. He'd circled around to find her daintily taking the driver's hand, and laughing airily about something Gordon hadn't heard said, as though the pair of them weren't in the middle of an argument only moments before. Then she'd stepped lightly onto the curb and waited expectantly for Gordon to join her, holding out a hand for him to take. He'd done so automatically as a matter of reflex, despite the fact that they'd been in an argument only moments before.

The generically named Mercy General Hospital in downtown Auckland is his family's hospital of choice, for any medical issues that can't be dealt with on Tracy Island. Ironically, these are usually nothing acute or serious. It's where their grandmother had gone for her hip replacement a couple years ago, and this had been handled so well that Scott had felt the need to make a bit of a gesture, and—feeling like a fruit basket for the nurses station would fall a little flat—had subsequently donated an entire radiology wing. To his credit, he'd at least _tried_ to do it anonymously, which was admirable in principle, but doomed to failure purely on the scale of the gesture. At best, it's an open secret that the Tracy family has a generous and ongoing relationship with Mercy General.

This explains why there's a hospital representative, smartly outfitted in a camel-coloured pantsuit rather than a nurse's scrubs, waiting expectantly near the triage station, just inside the emergency room doors. She's a pretty, pert brunette with the sort of wide, welcoming smile that belongs to someone whose job title includes the letters "PR", and her entire manner radiates her desire to accommodate whatever request might be made of her.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tracy," she says brightly, ignorant of the fact that _Mr. Tracy_ is his _father_ , before he and Penelope are even all the way across the threshold. "Welcome to Mercy General. I'm Olivia Mundee, head of our public relations department, and liaison for, ah… _particular friends_ of the hospital?" She phrases this like a question, as though he might possibly have heard of her and as though this specific phrase will mean something to him. "If you'd like to follow me?"

"Uh. Hi," he says, immediately and completely disarmed that he's been expected, recognized, and addressed with a dead man's name, in that order. He retreats into the relative safety of the vaguely Midwestern politesse that's been carved into him from childhood. "Sorry, ma'am, I think there's maybe been a mix-up? We're not here for a tour or anything, uh. Her Ladyship—Lady Penelope—needs to be evaluated. We're just here for the ER, we'll check in at the front desk and wait."

"No mix-up," Ms. Mundee answers cheerfully, and gives beckoning little wave as though to pull them further into the hospital, as she starts to drift out of the ER entirely, towards a long corridor into the hospital proper. "We've been expecting you, there's an on-call physician who'll be ready to see you shortly, if you'll follow me to a private exam room?"

Penelope, at least, perks up slightly at this prospect, obviously relieved. " _Oh_ , how very lovely. Perhaps this won't be so bad after all," she murmurs, and her hand leaves his, only to slip into the crook of his arm. She's so much shorter in flats, but there's still an imperious tug inside his elbow, as she adds, "Come along, darling. Of course we don't want to keep the good doctor waiting. Let's get this over with."

Gordon can't help but balk at this, the same vaguely Midwestern politesse objecting strenuously to the notion of any kind of special treatment, no matter what the grounds. Even if there's a eighteen million dollar radiology department with his family's name associated with it. "Oh—no, we really couldn't. Thanks, but we're fine in the waiting room. We'll just see the triage nurse, and—"

Ms. Mundee's head tilts slightly, though her smile doesn't fade, only grows somewhat perplexed. Gordon watches her give Penelope a rather unsubtle once over, before she explains, "Well, the triage nurse will tell you that if you're not currently presenting with an acute cardiac or respiratory condition, or experiencing severe pain or discomfort, you can expect your wait time in the emergency room to be around four hours at a _minimum_ , and we'd really much rather have you on your way more promptly than that. We really are ready to see you now, please, come right this way."

There's nothing for it, then. Midwestern politesse and a Kansas upbringing might object to special treatment, but both are soundly beaten out by getting caught between two women who are making a polite and perfectly reasonable request, and so Gordon swallows and nods and says something vaguely gracious and grateful, and obediently follows Ms. Mundee further into the hospital.

He _hates_ hospitals.

Gordon had hoped, naively, that with everything _else_ making him feel horrible right at the moment, there just wouldn't be any more room for the usual wave of quiet dread that washes over him whenever he finds himself in a hospital setting—but like cold water in a jar full of marbles, apprehension seeps into him and slowly fills up all the spaces between each and every other single god damn thing.

Marbles were always more Alan's deal. A big tupperware container of them, at least five pounds' worth, dropped endlessly through a towering wooden marble run custom made by Grandpa Grant. Once upon a time, Alan was an absolute _fiend_ for marbles. Gordon suspects that the big tupperware container still exists, back at the farmhouse. He doesn't know exactly _where_ , because marbles are basically made to be lost. But he spent enough of his adolescence playing with and/or babysitting his little brother to be able to call to mind the sorts of marbles that would best represent his current list of problems.

Problem: Penelope isn't well. That's probably a steely, an industrial grade ball bearing with delusions of frivolity. A solid little lump of metal amidst all the glass, but realer and harder and unbreakable, obviously set apart. That one's not going anywhere, not until it's surgically removed by a medical professional.

Problem: Penelope is _incredibly_ hard to read when she isn't well, pinballing from emotion to emotion, faster than he can keep up, and definitely faster than he can comprehend. That one's an aggie, a confusing swirl of solid colours. Opaque. Not his favourite. A bit of an ugly muddle.

Problem: Penelope _might_ only want him for his body. Cat's eye. Clear glass with a ribbon of stark colour curling through the middle. Conflicting. Complicated. A black licorice jellybean of an emotion. All right for some people. A mistake Gordon's definitely made before, despite knowing better, but one he'd been trying very hard not to make again. Currently leaving a _very_ bad taste in his mouth, tarry and awful.

But that's mixing his metaphors, and a jellybean doesn't belong in his marble jar, especially when circumstance seems to be slowly filling in all the space he needs to leave empty, if he has a hope in hell of solving any of his problems.

Of course, disassociating about marbles rather than apprehending his current reality isn't exactly helping either, so with an invisibly titanic effort Gordon snaps himself out of it, and tries to make a reasonable attempt at being present in the moment. Ms. Mundee's heels click sharply on the linoleum floors and her pace is the brisk stride of someone who knows her way around somewhere as labyrinthine as a hospital can be. Which is good, considering how absolutely lost this place makes him feel.

All hospitals are the same, in that they all remind him of the same specific hospital, from a long ago part of his history that he can really only think about in the abstract, even years afterward. There's just something about the banality of them, the way all the interior design in the world can't cover the fundamentally clinical nature of the place. The walls are all painted in warm, inoffensive neutrals, with insipid little blobs of art every twenty feet or so, but there's no disguising the fact that people here are hurt and sick and dying, and some of them won't ever leave. The place is clean, obviously—it's a good hospital, a nice hospital—but the chemical scent of disinfectant wafts subtly on the air, until it feels like it's _all_ he can smell, filling his lungs. And then, as he slowly grows accustomed to it, memory mingles with his present reality, and it seems like he can smell all the blood and disease and the death hidden behind it. It presses against the back of his throat and makes him want to retch.

Numb, but trying very hard not to be, Gordon just follows along as she leads them through the maze of hospital corridors. They pass nurses and doctors and patients, winding deeper and deeper into department after department, and there's no shaking the feeling that the further one gets into a hospital, the harder it becomes to get back out. His thoughts keep spiraling downward, circling in on themselves, and it's only the fact that Penelope needs to be here that's kept him from breaking down and making a break for it. Her arm is still wrapped around his, and he feels like she's the only thing tethering him to the present, rather than slipping backward into the past.

Even in spite of everything going on between them at the moment, he'd still rather think about _her_ than about the fact that he's in another goddamn hospital. In spite of everything, at least they're still together.

With Penelope on his arm, making effortless, breezy conversation with their escort as they get further and further into the place, he tries to phase himself back into paying proper attention, as she laughs airily at something Ms. Mundee has said.

"—well, of course one doesn't just _ask_ those sorts of things, but yes, now that you've said so, I could absolutely imagine him doing just exactly that. ' _Particular friends of the hospital_ ', well, just _so_. Donated your _entire_ radiology department, of _course_ he would. Dear Scott, he's so _tremendously_ unsubtle."

She seems better.

It's actually almost uncanny. If he hadn't been there, if he hadn't seen it happen, there's no way in the _world_ Gordon would believe it wasn't even an hour ago that Penelope had blacked out completely, flat unconscious on the bed in their hotel room. If it weren't for the coolness of her hand where it rests on his arm, a reminder of just how badly she'd scared him, he'd never have guessed there was anything wrong with her.

"—I simply must find excuses to spend more time in this part of the world, Ms. Mundee, especially at this time of year. You can't imagine the sort of climate I've left, just so _woefully_ dreary—"

She chatters blithely on about the weather, about the wind and the warmth and the sunshine, when she's left dour old Britain behind, under what seems like a cloud of perpetual rainy gloom. By the sound of her voice and the brilliance of her smile, neither would he believe that she'd lately been reduced to brokenhearted tears, absolutely sobbing into his shoulder, if there weren't still a faintly damp patch on his t-shirt.

And this is _exactly_ what she'd been crying about. It had been impossible not to listen to her, not to hang on her every word, when he'd never seen her as upset as she'd been, then. About the fact that she loathed how so much of her life required so much pretense, how exhausting it was having to _pretend_ all the time. But she's pretending now; she _has_ to be, when not half an hour ago, she'd begged and pleaded with him about how exhausted she was, and how much she would simply _hate_ to have to come here, to "some ghastly public hospital", if he correctly remembers her phrasing.

And yet—

"It really is just an absolutely _gorgeous_ facility you have here, and I can't thank you enough for being so quick to accommodate us at such short notice," Penelope insists, her voice all bright and genuine. And maybe deep down somewhere, she really means it, but Gordon can't help but marvel at how easily she lies. Her voice gains that coaxing, cajoling note again, as she continues "—though it does seem such an awful lot of fuss to go to, when I really _do_ feel just fine. I hate to trouble anyone who might have anything better to do—"

Gotta shut _that_ one down with alacrity. "We aren't leaving 'til you've been looked at, Pen," Gordon tells her, cutting into the conversation for the first time, firm and serious. "Especially not when someone's gone to the trouble of making time for you specifically."

Even that doesn't slice through all the sugar coating her every word and action, and she just laughs again and winsomely appeals to Ms. Mundee, "These paramedic types, it's so _dreadfully_ hard to pry them off the job, isn't it? He's been such a terrible bore about the whole thing. But of _course_ I'll see the doctor, darling. Whatever sets your heart at ease. I was only just saying, it does seem like a such a waste of the doctor's time."

"No such thing," Ms. Mundee declares cheerfully, as she finally finds her way to their ultimate destination, a private exam room clear across the hospital from the emergency room where they'd entered. She holds the door open, still with the high beams of her smile, as she adds, "We're happy to address any concerns you might have, major or minor. If you'll both please make yourselves comfortable, I'll let Dr. Martin know you're waiting and he'll be along shortly."

"Thank you, ma'am."

She closes the door as she goes, and Gordon's left alone with Penelope again. She's taken her hand from his arm, and pointedly refused to sit atop the waiting exam table, opting instead for a chair in the corner, presumably intended for a patient's escort. Gordon hadn't planned on sitting anyway, and remains standing, caught awkwardly between the desk in the corner beside the door, and the exam table. He shoves his hands into his back pockets, and begins to make a studious examination of the assorted instruments, posters and charts adorning the wall. With the door closed, it feels more like a doctor's office than a hospital, and that's better. That's bearable.

He's reading through an infographic detailing the anatomy of the human heart, when he starts to feel her silence stacking up behind him, the weight of her gaze lying heavily across his shoulders. He doesn't want to turn around, doesn't want to start the whole conversation again, when he no longer feels like he can _trust_ her—but she clears her throat and forces the issue.

"Are you cross with me?" she asks, and the tone of her voice has softened, as though she doesn't want to be overheard, though with the door closed and the hustle and bustle of the hospital outside, no one's likely to overhear. "You seem quite cross."

 _Cross_ is one of those extremely English words that she uses sometimes, which Gordon has no exact analogue for and can't quite penetrate the meaning of, and so the question is difficult to answer, even as he turns to face her. If she's asking if he's angry—he isn't, really. If she's asking if he's annoyed—that's not it either. If she's asking if he's upset with her— _maybe_ , but he doesn't _want_ to be. And it's hard to distinguish between being upset with her and just being upset generally—which he _is_ , and a lot of the reasons have to do with her, but aren't her fault exactly. More than anything else, he doesn't know _how_ he feels, and so he doesn't know how to answer her, except to shake his head and shrug. Maybe cross is the word for it.

"I will admit it's gone much better than I expected," she volunteers, and primly adjusts her skirt over her knees as she settles more comfortably in her chair. "You did hear her, though, when we first arrived? Four _hours_ in the waiting room, can you even imagine? I simply couldn't have borne it, my darling, you would've been lucky to get me to stay for twenty minutes."

"Guess it's a good thing I've got more money than you've got sense, then."

It just slips out, one of those sharp barbs that he exchanges with his brothers when things get particularly tense—things his brothers know him well enough to forgive him for—and he expects her to gasp, offended. She doesn't. Instead there's an amused little huff of breath and she just smiles. "Ah. So you _are_ cross."

But before he can shake his head to try and deny it, in staunch defiance of the expected wait times of even an expedited doctor's visit, there's a knock on the door, and the doctor arrives.


	32. pins and needles

The doctor leaves.

And Penelope isn't especially sorry to see him go, because by her standards he was a rather shrewish, unpleasant little man who asked a lot of pointed questions about personal subjects, which she supposes is a doctor's job, but which still needles uncomfortably at her natural inclination towards reticence. Dr. Martin is also possessed of the unfortunate tendency—once it becomes clear that Gordon is, firstly, the person who'd witnessed her ridiculous little fainting spell, and secondly a medical professional in his own right—of addressing questions to him rather than to her. And Gordon, of course, had obligingly rattled off the requested details with clinical expertise, and had probably told more of the truth than Penelope would've, if allowed to speak for herself.

It's hard not to be impressed by him, doing his job. He does it well, even when he does it to her personal disadvantage. And he handles the whole exchange with much more fluency than she ever could, and even if he is cross with her, comes to stand beside the exam table and hold her hand when a lab technician, summoned by the absent Dr. Martin, arrives to draw a vial or two of her blood. Penelope isn't bothered by the sight of blood, generally, but needles are a rather different matter, and she turns her face against Gordon's shoulder until the actually phlebotomy is over and done with. He absently kisses the top of her head as the tech finishes up, and then remains standing protectively close as the woman leaves, with two neatly labeled and colour coded little vials of blood.

The door closes again, and Penelope frowns at the sore spot at the crook of her elbow. Two of her fingers are still pressed against the bandage, covering the place where the needle had pierced her skin, and though the tech had by no means done a bad job, she's still certain to bruise, the way she always does whenever she has her blood drawn. "This is going to look frightful by tomorrow," she laments, making note of the fact that Gordon hasn't moved away, though he'd let go of her hand when she'd moved to put pressure against the bandage.

"You should mention it to the doctor, if you tend to bruise easily."

Penelope just sighs at this. "My doctor already knows that. I don't especially care for this doctor, and I'd rather not tell him anything more than necessary. I've told him what the problem is likely to be, and my bloodwork will come back with low levels of whatever it is they're looking for—"

"Red blood cell count, hematocrit, hemoglobin and iron," Gordon recites, automatically, though she hadn't asked.

"—with low levels of all that nonsense, and I'll be thoroughly scolded for not taking my iron supplements, and I'll be very, very sorry and promise to get back to taking them straight away, and then we'll be finished." She looks up hopefully, then, and adds, "And then we can go about our business."

He hasn't moved away, but there's a certain reticence about him, something still reserved and subdued. "I'm pretty sure that when we get done here, we'd better get you something to eat."

That's easily done. Penelope gives up on putting pressure against her newly acquired bandaid, and takes advantage of Gordon's continued proximity to reach for his hand again. She stays obediently seated on the exam table, but lifts his hand to rest it atop her knee, as she folds both her fingers over his. "We can call ahead for room service, have something waiting in the room for us when we get back," she suggests.

"Mmm. Okay." The palm of his hand is wonderfully warm against her skin, and he doesn't move to remove it, but he does shift slightly where he stands, and his body language telegraphs discomfort, unease. "If you're supposed to take iron supplements, why'd you stop?" he asks, slipping back into the medical interrogation she objects to so strongly, especially when it comes from him.

Still, she's attempting to soften his mood and make him feel better, since he's so clearly put out by the whole situation, so it seems like the best thing to do is at least attempt an honest answer. "Have you ever taken iron supplements?" she asks, turning the same interrogation back in his direction.

"Not lately."

Penelope shakes her head and smooths her hand over the hem of her skirt, still demurely covering her bare knees. It's surprisingly chilly in this particular office, and she only just manages not to shiver, because he'll be obnoxiously all over that if he notices. And he's certain to notice. "Well, they taste horrendous. Really, just absolutely vile. And my latest bottle of them must be a new formulation, because I'm quite certain they're worse than usual. It used to be I would take them every morning before breakfast, but then they were all I could taste 'til lunch. Then it got to be that I'd skip them now and again. Then it got to be every other day. Then I just fell out of the habit entirely." She shrugs. "It's nothing serious or sinister or anything I'm not already perfectly aware of. It's my own silly fault. As I said, I've been remiss. I'm not perfect, darling."

He shakes his head at that, perhaps a little too quick to agree. "I don't think you're perfect."

Penelope laughs lightly. "Well, no, you've made that abundantly clear over the course of the past hour."

Gordon winces, and she might detect an actual note of apology in his tone as he amends, "That's not what I mean. I mean—I know you're not perfect, nobody's perfect. I'm worried you think other people expect you to be. When other people are watching, it's like you're not…like you're not real anymore." He shrugs again, awkward and uncomfortable. "I just don't understand you, Pen. I thought that I did, or at least that maybe I was starting to…but I think maybe, actually, I really, really don't."

He's very dear, but he's also incredibly melodramatic, and she pats his hand where it rests on her knee. "Well, I'm frightfully muddled up at the moment, Gordon, and you've gone and dragged me out in public, which only compounds the problem. I promise, I would currently be making a great deal more sense if we'd just stayed where we were, and done what we were meant to."

That summons a flicker of frustration across his features again, irritation that she seems to be hashing over the same argument they've been having for the past hour or so. She isn't, actually, but he still shakes his head disapprovingly at her, "Penelope, at some point, you're gonna need to concede that coming here was just objectively the right thing to do. If I don't understand anything else, I understand what you want outta me, and that's…that's…fine. I'm sorry it didn't work out. I guess we'll have to talk about that. But honestly—"

They really are going to need to have that talk he seems to believe is necessary, because he's very much gotten his wires crossed, and needs straightening out. "That's not what I meant. What I meant is that if we'd stayed—whatever we'd ended up doing or not doing—I could've been more like myself. Even tired and hungry and ill and aching for you, at least I would've been myself. Not who I pretend to be when people are watching. As soon as we left, I had to put it all back on, and it's just so exhausting. But then, you can't introduce me to the Public Relations Liaison for one of the biggest hospitals in the country and expect me to behave as though I haven't got an absolutely perfect handle on everything."

"That's ridiculous."

It is, a little bit. "I can't turn it off," she says softly, repeating his own words back to him, and adding for emphasis, "No more than you can."

He sighs, and his exasperation with her starts to bleed through again. "Pen, honey, it's a hospital. I promise, nobody cares if you haven't got your shit together; hospitals are meant for people who are actively falling apart. Believe me, I know."

She shrugs. "Then they're not a place for me, because I simply can't do that."

"You did that," he points out, and though his frustration seems to ebb slightly, he still makes it sound like an accusation he expects her to try and weasel her way out of, like he thinks she'd deny it.

"Alone, with you, where no one else could see," she appends. "Because with you it feels safe to be honest."

"I've never seen you cry, never mind cry like that."

"No one ever really does." Her own feelings about the entire afternoon so far are dull and rather hazy. For as well as she can pretend to be keeping herself together, she's really very tired, and the whole thing has been such a blur of muddled up emotions. She feels tremendously raw and exposed by the whole thing, and when there's no one around to keep the facade up for, it's hard not to muse about the truth of the matter. "But then, you love me. Perhaps that's the difference. I don't know if I've ever been with anyone who actually loved me. You love me enough to just say so. No one else ever said so before. I'm not sure if I would've believed it if they had."

It's not often that she's going to manage to match him for sincerity. She's learned to expect it—that he'll just say what he means, easily and unambiguously—but she hasn't quite learned the trick of it herself. It doesn't come naturally. It's not her strong suit, and truthfully she prefers to tease and toy with him, to make him work through subtext and pretext and the layers of pretension that she lacquers over what she really means to say—but if she works at it, if she tries very hard, she can manage to come up with something appropriately straightforward. Something that gets to him the same way he gets to her.

And she's gotten to him now, she can tell by the way he stares at her with those big brown eyes, suddenly dumbfounded, as though she's just told him that the Sun turns round the Earth and not the other way around. "No," he says, protesting. "No, that—don't tell me that, Pen, I can't stand that."

"Why not?"

Gordon shakes his head, disbelieving, still refusing to accept what she's just told him. It's possibly not something she's ever told anyone, ever before. "I can't imagine anyone being with you and not being in love with you."

Her answering laugh is light and airy, if a little wistful, though not nearly as bothered by the notion as he seems to be. "And there's a cardinal difference between you and I, darling, because the reality requires very little imagination on my part."

"Penny."

It's a moment too late that Penelope realizes her mistake, because she can hear it in his voice when he says her name, see it in his eyes as she looks up at him—that she's been careless; cavalier in her dismissal of something that sounds like it might've been painful. Something that probably was, once upon a time, though Penelope's never been one to dwell on what hurts her, and the memory of any pain she might've felt has long since faded. But it's a blessing and a curse about Gordon, how he seems to feel absolutely everything. Even things that he imagines he needs to feel on her behalf.

And though she hasn't made a move from where she sits, Gordon shifts abruptly, and steps that much closer. So much the better to hold her, apparently, because this is what he does; gathers her immediately into an embrace, folding her up against his chest.

"I don't like that," he tells her, in that wholehearted way he has, simple and straightforward, meaning every word. "I just—god, Penelope, please tell me you never loved anyone who didn't love you back, because I don't think I could stand it."

This is one of those very honest, very sincere things he just says, in such a way that she can tell that he means it. He always seems to mean the things he says, and in saying this, it's possible that he might just have told her a truth he hadn't meant to, because something about the way he's said it snags on something inside her, catches and starts to unravel. There's a moment of sudden, brilliant clarity, and Penelope realizes that something quite obvious has been quite wrong between them, unbalanced and unfair. It must be very difficult, to love someone without knowing whether or not they love you back. It's not an experience they have in common. Penelope knows he loves her, it's written into everything he says and does.

Of course, this isn't the moment she falls in love with him.

It would be ridiculous, after all, to fall in love with Gordon Tracy while functionally locked in a medical exam room, in Auckland, on the other side of the world from where she belongs. Especially after an afternoon like the one they've had—their few, stolen hours spent sparking and clashing off each other, arguing about what she wants versus what he knows she needs. In a place as strange and foreign and discomfiting as this; when she's tired and hungry and ill and still quietly aching for him—it would make absolutely no sense for this to be the moment she falls in love with him.

It is, however, the moment she realizes that she's been in love with him for what feels like it must be ages by now, or at least far longer than it has been, officially. That even in spite of everything that today has been, the fact that today happened at all must surely be proof of something, because there are precious few people in the world for whom Penelope would fly clear across the globe, out of pure and simple longing. There are precious few people who could win an argument with her, especially on the subject of what she wants versus what she really needs. It's an argument she could only have lost to someone who loves her as much as Gordon does. And for as frustrating—at times infuriating—it's been to argue with him, there's still something she loves about that.

Of course she loves him, and it seems suddenly so obvious that she feels like an absolutely perfect fool, a complete idiot, because the only thing she hasn't done is tell him so.

At least that's easily remedied.

"Gordon," she murmurs, and gently pushes him away, just enough so she can reach up to touch his face, to cradle his jaw in the palm of her hand, and brush her thumb lightly over his cheek as he looks to her for an answer. "Do you suppose that I don't love you back?"

This might not have been the answer he was expecting. "I—" he stammers, then, and falters. Doubt washes over him, suddenly, visibly, in a way that makes her heart ache, that he can't tell that she's asking honestly. "I don't know."

"I do, I think. Love you." This isn't something that comes easily to her. It's only in remembering how easily it came to him—at a much more perfect moment and in a much more perfect place than a beige-coloured exam room in a hospital in Auckland—that she can smile, and look up at him, and say it with the whole of her heart behind it, "I love you. Oh, darling, of course I do. You're a frightfulnag about hospitals and you're very pushy when you're worried about me, but I've never known anyone who loved me like you do, and I'd have to be an absolutely perfect fool not to."

It seems to take a moment to hit him properly, and it's a very awful moment, where she's left teetering on the edge of his reaction, waiting for him to say something one way or the other—but it's only a moment, and when it passes he breaks into a grin, bright and sunshiney as ever, before fading quickly into uncharacteristic shyness, covering up what might just be sheer joy. There's colour in his cheeks, but light in his eyes as he gently touches her face, and bows his forehead to hers. "Really?" he asks, as though he still doesn't believe it.

Penelope reaches up to close her fingers around his, and softly promises, "Really." She smiles again, and tilts her face against the palm of his hand, lightly kissing his palm.

There's a mildly sardonic beat of silence, and then he challenges, "Even if I'm a nag about hospitals?"

It's possible that no one else in the world could have convinced her to come here. He doesn't realize just how meaningful that really is. She shrugs, as though it's not at all a big deal. "Well, we're here now. I suppose that means you were probably right."

Her concession doesn't seem to satisfy him, and he persists, "And very pushy?"

"You're not as pushy as I am. And I suppose I worried you."

One of his hands has stayed resting at her hip, and at that he squeezes gently, for emphasis. "You worried the fuck outta me."

She does love the way he curses around her, because nobody else ever seems to. It gives her such a pleasant little thrill. "Literally," she agrees.

A note of doubt creeps back into his voice, and he sounds somewhat reluctant as he admits, "I thought that was maybe all you wanted."

Not all she wanted. "My acknowledgment of the fact that that is very much something I wanted is in no way meant to detract from the fact that I want everything else as well."

"I mean, I like hookups in hotel rooms as much as the next guy, but for a long time that's all my love life was. It just how it gets empty, after a while."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't know." She's got him beat there, and knows it. "It'd been years since I'd been with anybody, before you came along." Penelope smiles to herself at that, and adds, "Worth the wait, though."

That teases a grin out of him again, another flash of brilliance. This is much better. This feels much, much better, now that they've managed to get themselves onto the same page. "Well, I try."

"You'll do." And then for added emphasis, and because she's clearly in need of the practice, she repeats herself, "I love you, Gordon. I think perhaps I came all this way because what I really wanted was to say so."

That seems to convince him and the hand that had ghosted gently across her cheek cradles her face properly now, as he answers, "I love you, too."

"I know, dearest. And it's made me so very happy. Whoever else may or may not have loved me at any other point in my life seems to matter very little, when I'm lucky enough that you love me now."

In lieu of an answer—perhaps because no other answer would suffice—he kisses her. Properly this time. Not one of those irritating little pecks on the forehead, but a proper kiss, one that has her melting in his arms as he holds her. Still sat on the edge of the exam table, she's at just the right height to wrap her arms around his neck, and one of her hands teases its way into a handful of his hair.

And it's this that she wanted, really. Even as he kisses her again and she feels her breath catch, it doesn't matter that the doctor will be back any moment now; doesn't matter that it can't possibly go further than this, because all she'd wanted was to feel loved once again, to have proof of it. There's more to it than liaisons in hotel rooms and hours stolen from the lives they lead separately, more to it than whether or not anyone else knows or needs to know. There's something more between them than anything she's ever known or felt before, and it's consuming, all-encompassing, because she can tell he feels it too.

Of course, it really shouldn't go any further than just a few kisses. It really shouldn't, and yet it does. He kisses her like he doesn't intend to stop, and she doesn't intend to stop him. Her hand buried in his hair slides down to clasp the back of his neck, and the hand he'd had at her waist slips along the curve of her thigh, to the hem of her skirt until his fingertips tease beneath it, his palm rubbing over her skin. She shivers, but not at the chill in the air, but rather the way her back arches as she presses herself against him.

This is probably very rude. Not that either of them particularly care, but then, nor do either of them actually notice the door opening.

Dr. Martin reappears, lab results in hand, to find his patient utterly and entirely indifferent to his presence, and very much otherwise engaged.

Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward is—despite her currrent, apparently enthusiastic preoccupations—anemic to the point that he's surprised she's still upright. It speaks to a remarkable amount of personal fortitude that she's managed to continue her day, more or less as normal, especially considering the circumstances. Dr. Martin clears his throat, delicately, but goes ignored.

This is offensive, both personally and professionally. Dr. Martin is the sort of doctor who expects a certain amount of personal and professional courtesy from his patients—especially patients he's been called to attend to specifically, because they're "particular friends of the hospital". This is, definitely, very rude.

And it's perhaps a little bit unprofessional, but he can't quite help himself, as he shuts the door a little more loudly than necessary and announces, "Well. I suppose it will come as no particular surprise to anyone present that your ladyship is pregnant."

* * *

 **a/n**

and nobody was surprised

thanks for reading :) one more brief interlude, and then back to the island.

and THEN we can start the story properly!

\o/


	33. interlude: here and now

**_a/n_**

 ** _Hi._**

 ** _So, there's an optional scene in the middle of this chapter, removed from the main body of the text so as to keep within ffnet's draconian and regrettable content guidelines. Eagle-eyed readers will perhaps notice the place where it belongs. Considering I had never intended to push past a T rating on this piece, I decided that I'd prefer to keep it as an opt-in part of the work anyway, because this sort of thing isn't everyone's cup of tea._**

 ** _Skipping it will not detract from the story in the slightest, but the link referenced below redirects to redirect, and then on to a private post with another 3k bonus words of lovely, well-deserved intimacy._**

 ** _If you're into that sort of thing, the link can be found at my tumblr tb5-heavenward, backslash nsfw. If you have any trouble navigating to that link, please feel free to message me directly and I'll hook you up, and as always, please consider finding this work over at Ao3, where there's loads of extra art available throughout the piece and links are easily added and accessed at the reader's discretion._**

 ** _Thanks for reading._**

* * *

Of course, it just makes _sense_.

It explains _everything_. For Gordon, the entire afternoon suddenly snaps into perfect, logical clarity, and every confusing, maddening, inexplicable aspect of her behaviour suddenly has a simple explanation. In an ironic sort of way, it's a relief. Penelope's not deathly ill, she's pregnant. She doesn't _actually_ turn into an absolute and utter nightmare when she doesn't get her way, she's _pregnant_. She's not secretly a nymphomaniac who wants one thing from him and one thing _only_ —she's just pregnant.

But then, there's no _just_ about just being pregnant.

This changes everything.

With the bombshell that's just dropped, there's very little time for embarrassment at getting caught mid-makeout in the doctor's exam room. Penelope, for her part, undergoes another remarkable metamorphosis, and her bright, glossy, false exterior of cheer and charm hardens into an absolutely impenetrable shield of pure composure. If she's shocked by the news, she doesn't show it. She listens intently to everything the doctor says—though with as condescending as he is about the whole thing, Gordon's opinion of him drops precipitously—but declines any further information, and meekly accepts the instruction to resume her iron supplements at their usual dosage with the addition of a pre-natal vitamin, and to make an appointment with her own doctor as soon as possible, to more fully discuss her options.

She's exquisitely graceful as she thanks Dr. Martin and when Ms. Mundee arrives to show them out again, she gives no outward sign of having received news of any kind about the condition which brought her to the hospital in the first place. Ms. Mundee, well practiced in not seeming the slightest bit interested in that sort of thing, instead chatters blithely about the hospital's upcoming benefit gala. By the time they reach the lobby, they're listed together on the guest list, which is surreal in its own way.

They leave the hospital with Gordon rather helplessly following her lead, because by now he knows exactly how much effort it takes for Penelope to maintain her composure, and he's not about to give her away.

From the hospital, there's really nowhere to go but back to the hotel, and it's easy enough to summon a cab to the hospital's front entrance, though other than telling their driver the destination, Penelope sits in complete silence for the duration of the ride. Her expression remains neutral, still and placid, and the only evidence of anything like internal turmoil is the way she leans against him in the back seat of the cab, laces her fingers through his and clasps his hand rather fiercely. To all outward appearances, she's nothing more than quietly introspective. Gordon's only lucky he has no idea what to say, or her silence would be just about unbearable. As things stand, all he can do is wait for whatever cue she gives him next.

Out of the cab, back into the hotel lobby, a gracious nod to the concierge. Into the elevator, and she crowds rather closer into the corner of the small space than she might otherwise, when it becomes apparent that they're sharing the ride up with a family of gabbling Australian tourists, who thankfully depart after only a couple floors. They ride up to their room in continuing silence, and it's not until they cross the threshold and the door closes that Penelope's ironclad composure finally cracks.

And then, it's less of a crack than it is an absolute collapse. She crumples to her knees on the brightly patterned carpet, dropping so quickly that for a moment Gordon thinks she's fainted again, until she breaks down the rest of the way, and starts crying for the second time he's ever seen in the entire five years he's known her.

Of course he's beside her in seconds, sat on the carpet next to her, gathering her up into an embrace at the same time as she climbs into his lap, throws her arms around his neck and just _sobs_ , gone completely beyond words and into the realm of absolute anguish. Gordon still doesn't know what to say, and so all he can do is hold her, hating to hear her cry.

But then, she's pregnant. The little paramedic in the back of his head has made an unsolicited reapperance, and is helpfully spouting off every symptom he knows from early pregnancy, in an effort to fill the hollow place where Gordon's actual thoughts and feelings about the situation are supposed to be, but which is instead reverberating around an empty space, like a bell that's been rung and hasn't yet stopped ringing.

Fatigue. Altered appetite. Heightened sensations of taste and smell. Mood swings, emotionality. Exacerbation of an existing condition, anemia that she probably could've managed if it weren't for the rather urgent new demands being leveraged upon her circulatory system.

Penny's pregnant. He got Penny pregnant. That happened. It happened exactly _once_ (technically twice, although still well within the margin of being a single event, and anyway, once is all takes), on January 25th, 2062. It doesn't really _help_ to know the exact date, when he can't remember the number of days or weeks to add to it. It's been about five and a half weeks, but he seems to recall that there are tricky rules about calculating gestation. It's not really something that comes up _that_ often, in his particular line of work.

Gordon can't remember the exact math that goes into calculating the due date of a pregnancy, but at least they're rock solid on the date of conception. There's absolutely _zero_ ambiguity there, _that_ information is so granular that if he really tried, he could probably work it out down to the minute. Or the hour, at least.

That's not really how it works. Gordon is well beyond the territory of useful expertise, and the little paramedic needs to put a sock in it, at least as far as pregnancy is considered. It's not helpful.

He's better with immediate problems, anyway, acute issues that can be addressed directly, in the here and now. Penelope is pregnant, but Penelope is also _exhausted_ , in a way that's probably not especially safe for a pregnant woman to be, whether she wants to be pregnant or not. She's exhausted to the point that she doesn't even manage to cry for very long; really only a few minutes, curled up in his lap and clinging onto him for dear life. Those big, heartrending sobs gradually diminish into soft little hiccupping breaths and she wilts against his chest with a shuddering sigh.

When she finally speaks, with her voice all small and hopeless and broken, she says the last thing in the world he wants to hear—

"—I'm so, _so_ sorry."

* * *

If she lets him go, Penelope's absolutely certain that she'll fall straight through the floor and just keep falling forever. He must be able to feel her shaking, because she can't do anything else. She'd barely been able to speak, and now that she has, another sob chokes its way free from her throat, but dies on her lips as a whimper as he pulls her even closer and presses a kiss against the crown of her head. It's the first time this afternoon that she hasn't hated the gesture.

"Don't apologize, Pen," he murmurs softly in her ear. "You're not half as sorry as I am."

This isn't his fault, except it _is_ a little bit, but only just as much as it is her own. She wants to protest, to tell him just exactly that—but all she manages is a feeble shake of her head, and the beginning of an objection. "Oh—no…"

She feels it when he swallows, and he doesn't actually seem to realize he's interrupting her as he goes on, his voice running away from him even as he finds it again, vehement, "I'm usually _so_ goddamn careful. I mean, like—Penelope, I've slept with a _lot_ of people. I don't know how else to put that, because that's just—it's just true. I've been fooling around with anybody who was down for it since I was _seventeen_ , and maybe in a lot of ways that was kinda really fucking stupid of me, but at least I've always, _always_ been _careful_. Nothing like this ever happened. I mean… _obviously_ not. But then—"

He trails off helplessly, and then sighs. Because it's still true and because she can't think of anything else to say, she repeats herself, "I'm sorry…"

"No!" he protests again, immediately. "No, Pen, Christ. Don't be. Please. This one's on me, _seriously_. I'm _always_ on top of this kinda thing—nothing should've been different just because it was _you_. I just—that night was just—I didn't think of anything but being with you. And…fuck, I don't know. I guess any part of me that would've thought about…about consequences…just figured that you'd have your own situation…uh…figured out. With…with birth control, or whatever."

What a perfectly reasonable and natural assumption.

It's just exactly the sort of thing that an experienced, worldly sort of woman who has most _definitely_ had sex with more than four people (present company very much included), more than a couple dozen times in her entire life would _definitely_ have thought of beforehand. And afterward. And just in general, because someone with even an average amount of god damned good _sense_ would've thought about the reality that sex does _occasionally_ lead to pregnancy, if the appropriate precautions aren't taken.

She hadn't taken them. He'd assumed she had, and she can't blame him even a little bit for doing so, because of course he'd think the best of her.

But it does make her start to cry again, that he would've given her so much more credit than she deserves.

He doesn't tell her to stop, doesn't do anything as trite as telling her it's all going to be okay, because neither of them can possibly know that right now, and she hates an empty promise. Gordon just holds her, and lets her cry until she can't any longer, which doesn't take very long at all.

And even in spite of everything, she's so grateful that he's here. And deep, _deep_ down—even if it turns out to have been the most awful mistake, one of the biggest she's made in her life so far—she still wouldn't trade anything about that first night for the world. If either of them had slowed down, had stopped for even a moment, to consider what they were about to do and its broader context and its potential consequences—it wouldn't have happened at all.

Penelope doesn't know if she could stand that. The schism of reality where she'd gone on _without_ falling in love with him—it just seems like it would be a far colder, far emptier place.

From the very beginning and even before that, he's been so much more than she ever knew, more than she realized. Here and now, in the moment, something about it feels somehow inevitable. Even though it all hangs on a chain of such vanishingly small chances—the odds that she would've been the one to host his grandmother's eightieth birthday party. The odds that he would've come to find her, that very first night, and that he would've found her again, in a dark hallway long after everyone else was asleep, at precisely the right moment. And then moment after moment after moment, and they'd all flown by in a beautiful, rapturous blur, and now they've added up into minutes and hours and days and weeks and of course pregnancies get measured in weeks, don't they?

Penelope doesn't actually know. The whole idea of it is something that exists on the edges of her awareness. Morning sickness and an assortment of trimesters and elective C-sections and all manner of other peripheral nonsense. It's news she gets in a far-off, vague sort of way, through the grapevine. Someone or other always seems to be expecting, some celebrity or acquaintance or celebrity acquaintance. Pregnancies are the sort of thing that happen to _other_ people, to distant friends from long ago school days, the sorts of people who populate the fringes of her social sphere. The ones who'd gone to their lives and careers and marriages of all sorts, some for power and some for money and some just for show. Maybe even some for love.

It's possible that a very cynical part of Penelope never really expected to know about that, either.

But she hopes its what she feels now. Twisted up in all the fear and anguish and confusion and doubt, there's a thread of gold that seems to bind her to him, that some small part of her could feel so lucky that he's here. That it's _him_ out of everyone it could've been—not that there were many other people it ever could've been—even now, even with the one in a million moment of bad luck amidst all the good, she's so grateful to be curled up in his lap, pressed against his chest, held in his arms. If she had the energy, she'd lift her face to kiss him, just to feel that little, reassuring thrill of golden warmth—but she doesn't. Can't muster the energy. It's taking everything in her (currently very diminished) power not to fall through the floor.

Gordon seems to know it, too. He lets her sit for a few more moments, before he takes a deep breath and then exhales slowly, not quite a sigh. He shifts, beneath her, and before she can realize what he's doing, his arms are strong and secure beneath her knees, behind her back again. It's just effortless, the way he scoops her off the floor, and that's lucky too, because Penelope can barely pick up her head from where it rests against his shoulder. Just like when she first arrived—back on the other side of the Rubicon of this afternoon—it's not at all far from the door to the bed, and she's settled gently atop the duvet for the second time today. Gordon sits at the edge of the bed beside her, and she still clings to one of his hands like a lifeline, while the other gently comes up to cradle her face.

His thumb carefully swipes tears from her eyes, and then his fingertips brush aside the strands of hair that have been plastered to her face by the same. She must look an absolute fright, but she can't bring herself to care. Maybe without meaning to, eventually his fingers drift down along her jawline, seeking her pulse. He seems to realize it in the same moment that she does, and he stops, apologizes immediately.

"Sorry. You don't like it when I do that."

She doesn't, really, but she just shrugs in answer and doesn't open her eyes. Lying down was a bad idea, because the bed is soft and the duvet is cool against her skin, but if she were to clamber beneath it, she warm up soon enough and then just drift away, into the darkness that waits below the surface of the waking world. There's so much she needs to think about, so much that needs to be dealt with. Her brain, worn out and weary though it is, keeps skipping lightly from one truth to the next, attaching logical explanations to each and every single one. It only serves to wear her out further, but neither can she seem to make it stop.

Gordon hasn't let go of her hand, and his fingers are still warm within his. The sudden realization of how chilled she feels sends a shiver through the rest of her, and of course he notices. Clears his throat. "How're you feeling?" he asks softly.

There's no simple answer to that question. There are a _dozen_ answers to that question, all of them complicated.

Afraid. Remorseful. Small and lost and sick and tired. _Exhausted_. Too young and too old, both at once. Shocked and overwhelmed and _stupid_. Stupid stupid _stupid_.

But really the only word for how she is, is just—

"Pregnant."

* * *

That's really about the only reasonable answer he could've expected. And of course the only thing he can do is look after her.

She _hates_ to be looked after. Gordon knows that from _ages_ back, it's been true about Penelope for almost as long as he can remember, that she bristles beneath the watchful eye of anyone watching out for her. He doesn't know how Parker gets away with it.

But he doesn't know what else he's supposed to do, doesn't know how to do anything else, when faced with someone who needs taking care of, whether they want it or not.

Penelope lies still on the bed beside him, with her eyes closed and her breathing soft and her body undergoing one of the most incredible, strenuous things the human body is capable of. She's exhausted and he knows she's exhausted because she _looks_ exhausted, which is another remarkable first in the entire time he's known her. Even against the snowy white down of the bedspread, she's awfully pale, and even the makeup she's wearing can't quite hide the dark circles beneath her eyes. Lying down, with the soft silk fabric of her blouse pulled tighter across her chest, the outline of her bra is visible and that just _can't_ be comfortable. It hasn't stopped her from drifting immediately off to sleep, even in spite of everything she must be feeling right now, emotional and physical.

And it's not like he can blame her.

The afternoon has flown by. Through their hotel room window, the sun drifts towards the horizon, early evening light glowing golden over the harbour. It's not sunset—won't be for another couple hours yet, but it's right around dinner time, and well past time that Penelope ate something properly. For Gordon's part, he's due back on Tracy Island— _expected_ back on Tracy Island—in about six hours' time. Midnight. It's a two hour flight from Auckland back to the island, and that's only if he _really_ pushes the engines of the little puddle jumper he'd pulled out of the hangar for the trip, and left parked on a private airstrip south of the city. Which is about an hour distant. Gordon's starting to have to think about the time it's all going to take, and increasingly it seems like midnight's not going to happen. Getting back to the rest of the world suddenly seems like an extremely low priority, compared to the here and now.

Still. One problem at a time. That's one of the core tenets of his family's philosophy, and right now the problem is that his newly pregnant, very anemic girlfriend hasn't eaten anything of consequence in the past eight hours. Not since Langstrom _Fucking_ (actual middle name: Herschel) Fischler attempted to feed her an algae burger.

Although—

"…wanna hear something funny?" he asks, though he's certain by this point that she must be asleep and he doesn't expect an answer. He shouldn't wake her, because right now it's a tossup between whether food or sleep is more important, and if she's already asleep, then sleep probably wins.

But she surprises him, as she's wont to do, and her eyes blink open again. Blue like the sea and the sky, though rimmed with red from crying. "Is anything funny right now?" she asks softly, and there's just the tiniest glimmer of a challenge in her voice, the one he'll always, always rise to.

Still. He hedges a bit, "Ironic, more than funny, maybe."

"You said funny."

" _Well_. I think it's a little bit funny. You maybe won't, I dunno."

"Try me."

Gordon clears his throat, a little awkwardly now, because possibly this is not actually funny at all. Possibly this is gonna go over about as well as a screen door in a submarine, and Brains has already tried that, and all that happened was that Gordon got _wet_. "S'just, there's like—I dunno, about a hundred and fifty percent of your RDI for iron in only about a hundred grams of spirulina. Algae. Algae burger. It's why vegetarians go for it. Couple of bites would've done it. Probably would've been just enough to tide you over."

The pun, funnily enough, is unintended.

But she still laughs. It's a minor miracle, and a weak, watery little laugh, but she does. And he knows by now that she's too tired to politely fake it, either, and so he can't help but be a little bit relieved that it's worked.

For a moment, anyway.

Because her breath catches and stutters slightly, and her eyes brighten again, and her hand pulls free from his to try and catch a sob as it slips from her lips, and then she's just crying again.

It's so hard to see her cry, but neither can he blame her for crying. He also can't just _leave_ her to cry, it's nothing less than necessary to lie down next to her, stroking her hair and holding her and not saying anything, because some instinct tells him words won't help. One weak little joke and one weak little laugh were nothing, really. It's all too big and neither of them are ready, and as much as he wishes he did, Gordon still doesn't know what to say.

It's not often that Gordon feels his age. He's only twenty-five, and _barely_ twenty-five, so there's not a hell of a lot of age there to feel—but he feels it now. He's younger than _she_ is, and at the moment he feels the difference in their ages acutely. He's old enough to be a father, but too young to have ever actually considered fatherhood. Old enough to know better, that's for damn well fucking sure, but still young enough to only have been really and truly in love only just once, with the woman beside him now.

Because she _is_ , after all. Very much a woman. The sort of woman who makes him wish he felt like more of a man and less like a boy. She'd known that about him. The indelible memory of that first morning together, _their_ first morning together—she'd reached out, flicked his nose with a manicured fingertip and said the word " _boy_ ". Accusing. Teasing, maybe. He'd just grinned and teased her right back. He hadn't felt it, then, it hadn't landed. Not after the night they'd had, when the pair of them had been nothing so chaste and innocent as "boy and girl" or as proprietary and correct as "gentleman and lady".

He doesn't know what they are now. They'd barely settled into "boyfriend and girlfriend", and now _this_.

"Husband and wife" seems like the configuration that would ideally precede "father and mother", but it's _way_ too soon for the former, especially when the latter may not ever even happen. Even boyfriend and girlfriend seems like it might be on the rocks. They're still at the beginning of everything—and maybe this is not the end, maybe it isn't even the beginning of the end, and he hopes like hell it's not the end of the beginning—because she's the sort of person who'd be able to tell him if Churchill really said that.

And he loves her, sure—but he still can't reliably recall her middle name, still gets mixed up between "Abigail" and "Amelia" when actually it's "Catherine". He loves her, but if he's known her for five whole years, the cumulative total of every second they've ever spent together in any capacity probably totals fewer than five _weeks_. He loves her, but it's only three weeks since he said so, and less than an hour since she said it back. He doesn't even know if he _believes_ it, especially in light of the fact that Penelope's running on the sort of high-octane cocktail of hormones that kick in with the onset of a pregnancy. He doesn't know enough about love to know if she really meant it—or if it's the sort of thing that could get chemically confused in the middle of something as big and complicated as being pregnant. Being in love with her always seemed so simple, even if he's always been afraid that it might not go both ways.

But then, maybe that's something. Because she's at least always liked to hear him say it, and holding her now, as she helplessly cries herself back into exhaustion again—at least it would be something to say. Something true, something which hasn't changed, and _won't_ change. Something she needs to know, even if she doesn't really love him back. Even if she only said it because she's pregnant, even if she hadn't known that when she said so. There's no way in the world he could hold it against her, and when things are a little less complicated, he'll be sure to tell her so.

But for now—

"I love you, Penelope," he murmurs in her ear, and kisses her forehead. "And I'd do anything in the world for you right now."

* * *

And he _would_ , too.

If Penelope still can't entirely believe that she's pregnant, she believes it about him—immediately and earnestly—that he'd do absolutely anything she asked, here and now and probably ever, actually. If she's certain of nothing else, she's certain that Gordon loves her, and it's probably the only thing holding her together right now. That he's warm and solid and real beside her, that his hand hasn't once left hers without her taking it away, that he won't even think of leaving her now.

He's too good. Entirely too good for her, with his enormous heart and his perfect sincerity, the way he always means the things he says, and says them when she most needs to hear them.

And he holds her when she needs to be held, the way he does now as she twists onto her side, curls up and gets just as close as she can to him, nestling against the warmth of his chest. She feels it in her whole body as she starts to tremble again, a convulsive shiver of exhaustion and fear and anguish and _everything_ , but really just the chill of the room more than anything else.

"Cold?" Gordon asks, and his arms tighten around her, even as she presses her knee in between his thighs, trying to get that much closer.

"Mm. Mmhm."

"Should get under the blankets and sleep, honey. Here, I'll—"

He starts to sit up, and of course that's just _very_ bad, and Penelope's only recourse is to absolutely _cling_ to him, fierce and desperate, or as fierce as she can be with as weak as she feels. The desperation seems like enough to hold him back, anyway. "No," she protests, "No, please. Stay. _Please_ just stay."

That stops him, but only for a moment as he hesitates. His fingertips card through her hair and he kisses her forehead again. "I'm just gonna turn the AC off, Pen. And maybe grab you a change of clothes, something more comfortable. You've _gotta_ rest, babe, you've had just a hell of a day, even without…without everything else. C'mon, sweetheart. I won't go anywhere, Pen, I swear."

He's infinitely gentle as he pulls her arms away from where she'd wrapped them around his neck, sits up at the edge of the bed again. As though to reassure her, his left hand stays resting on her hip, and with the other he activates a console embedded in the bedside table and adjusts the temperature in the room. The omnipresent hum of AC ceases softly, and a rush of warm air from somewhere else cycles on in its place. He fiddles with a few more settings, and the golden light through the big, floor to ceiling window out over the harbour dims slowly. The window glass tints into near opacity, and the room darkens along with it, shutting out the rest of the world.

It's not _that_ dark in the bedroom, but when she closes her eyes, there's nothing but inky blackness waiting behind them, as though it's much, much later than it really is. Vaguely, she realizes that she really has no idea what time it is, but that she's almost certainly been awake for at _least_ twenty-four hours by now, and perhaps he might be right.

And maybe in spite of the way she wants not to, Penelope drifts off for a little while—but it could only possibly be for a few moments. She feels the shift of the mattress as he gets to his feet, feebly tries to reach out and grab his hand before he can leave her—but the next thing she knows, he's sitting back down at the edge of the bed again. She opens her eyes once more, and finds he's got a familiar fistful of satin and lace balled up in one hand, and a mildly disapproving expression.

"Are these the only pajamas you packed?" he asks, and unfurls the little negligee she'd brought, a lovely little rose and cream coloured thing, with a delicate bodice of sheer floral lace and a lacy little thong to match. She's already wearing the latter. She hadn't intended to wear it long.

" _Déshabillé_ ," she says, and smiles faintly to herself at the memory of that long ago winter morning, as though it's not also the morning that might've utterly upended the rest of her life.

"Gesundheit. They won't be anywhere near warm enough, though."

"Warmth was not my primary consideration. " She yawns, despite herself, and vaguely waves the little night dress away, and then drowsily, absently plucks at the front of her ivory silk blouse. "This is fine."

"It's really not." At this he gently takes hold of her elbow and gives an insistent little tug. "C'mon, hon."

He's very bossy. But she gives in and sits up, though he seems to know that she needs his help to do so, and the act of bringing herself back into a vertical orientation does make her head spin dizzily once again. Clumsily, she starts to undo the one single button on her blouse, one at the nape of her neck that modestly pulls the collar closed from the back. It's with a detached sort of irritation that she notices that her fingers are stiff and her hands are trembling, and her assigned task is borderline impossible.

Unasked, Gordon takes over. "Here," he says softly, reaching around her. It's with a deft little twist of his fingers that the single troublesome button comes undone. He continues to assist, and his hand slides down her back to the base of her spine, loosening the hem of her blouse from where it's tucked neatly into the waist of her skirt. Then further down, and he finds the zipper pull at the back of her skirt, slides it a few slow inches along the curve at the base of her spine.

He's probably undressed a great many people, both in his personal and professional life, with as brisk and practiced as he is about the business of it. The last time he undressed her they were in Paris, in another darkened hotel room, and she'd felt like a birthday present being unwrapped. The way his hands had been quick, but gentle; eager and reverent all at once. There's none of that now. Her blouse is carefully pulled off over her head, and her skirt, appropriately loosened, slips easily off and slides to the floor. Her shoes are already missing—she can't remember taking them off, and supposes he might've taken them off for her—and she's still left shivering in her underclothes, all too eager to crawl beneath the blankets and find her way towards warmth and sleep.

Her bra clasps in the front, a cleverly hidden magnetic closure that comes undone much more easily than a button at the back of her blouse. And the slight (though constant) pressure around her ribcage suddenly loosens, such that she lets out a relieved sigh of breath. It feels a great deal as though she's come undone, and every unnatural, unconscious aspect of the prim and proper way she holds and carries herself is allowed to relax. Penelope stretches and rolls her shoulders, before shrugging her bra off, dropping it to the floor.

And for a moment the inequality between them seems jarring. There's been nothing untoward about the way Gordon's undressed her—it had been brisk, almost businesslike, purely a practical choice. And as much as suddenly being all but naked before him calls to mind what she'd first wanted, back when she'd first stumbled across the threshold, aching with desire and just _desperate_ for him—there's none of that now. She feels curiously empty, rather vague and disconnected, as though something inside's gone missing or gotten switched off somehow. For a moment, she just sits and watches him watching her, rendered down to her most intimate essentials, vulnerable and entirely exposed.

But only for a moment. Before she entirely realizes he's done it, Gordon's pulled his t-shirt off, pressed it insistently into her hands. It's warm and soft and a much, _much_ better option than the dainty little negligee she'd brought. She pulls it on automatically, though it's much, _much_ too big—and suddenly finds herself enveloped in the warmth of him, the _essence_ of him.

Penelope doesn't know enough about pregnancy to know she has it as an excuse, but as she draws a deep breath, the scent drawn into her lungs along with it is almost overwhelming. Faintly musky notes of sweat masked by some three part blend of bodywash and deodorant and just the slightest suggestion of cologne. It's a heady cocktail of intense familiarity and the rush of sensation is accompanied by the sight of him, suddenly bare-chested, as he coaxes and cajoles her into lying back down. Penelope reclines slowly against the mattress, guided by the touch of his hands, sinking back against cool cotton sheets and the plush softness of downy feather pillows, with the room dark and cool around them.

And Gordon would do anything in the world for her.

He'd said so, and she believes it with the whole of her heart. Anything she wanted, anything she could ask. Here and now, in spite or _because_ of everything that's happened between then, there's nothing she could need that he would possibly deny her. Gordon loves her, and Penelope loves him, deeply and desperately, in a way that's gone beyond words and and gone beyond want and become a simple, uncomplicated _need_. She aches for him, once again, but now it's an ache of soul and not of body. A want of heart and not of mind.

Penelope hopes the way she looks up at him, as she reaches up to touch his face, is enough to make her wishes explicitly clear.

* * *

❤️

* * *

Gordon lies still beside her for what feels like a long time, afterward, just listening to her breathe, as he wonders what the opposite of the afterglow is.

Some sort of emotional penumbra, maybe, something like a shadow. As though the way he's supposed to feel is still _there_ , somewhere, just obscured by something else. Because what he feels now, try as he might to feel otherwise, isn't anything, exactly. Just sort of a hollowed out absence, alien and unfamiliar to the sort of person who's accustomed to feeling everything with immediacy, easily and completely and basically all the time.

Here and now, lying in the dark, if he turns his head and squints, he can still see through the smoky tint of the window, and the way it obscures the glorious riot of light and colour that constitutes a South Pacific sunset over the harbour, as the day draws to its close outside. It's a lot like that. A lot like the fact that he _knows_ what's supposed to be there, all vivid and complicated and enormous and real—but it's been muted by something.

It's not _bad_ , exactly. And maybe it's just the sheer totality of her exhaustion bleeding through and seeping into him, osmotically. Weariness by proxy, like a big, emotionally dampening blanket. Made of lead.

Not that the weight of her body on top of his is anything worth mentioning. She's a tiny little slip of a thing, and time and time again Gordon's surprised by how small she is, really. Her presence has always been nothing less than titanic, at least as far as he's concerned. When Penelope walks into a room, it's like the entire world suddenly reorients itself around her arrival. Voices soften and colours dim and at even five feet, three inches tall, she still towers at the center of attention, never anything less than equal to the weight of the world's gaze upon her.

Maybe that's not a universal experience.

And maybe it's the lack of her presence that he feels now, because she's just _gone_. Her breathing has deepened and her body has stilled and as he runs his hand slowly up and down her arm, he can feel goosebumps covering her skin, though she's not trembling the way she had been earlier. When he shifts slightly, carefully easing her weight to the side so he can sit up and straighten out the blankets to tuck her in properly, she doesn't even stir. There's no suggestion of a response as he gently brushes her hair back from her face, nor when he gives into the impulse to lean over and softly kiss her again. She just sleeps, and really, it's about damn time.

Except, in her absence, time is beginning to become a problem.

Sitting up, he can see the clock at the bedside, and it's pushing 1930h.

Realistically, if he wants to be back on the island by the time he's _supposed_ to be back on the island, he needs to leave in about an hour, and even that'd be cutting it pretty fine. That's allowing half an hour to get out of the city and about forty-five minutes to get out to the airstrip where he left his ride—a zippy little vintage Cessna that had been their grandmother's, scrupulously maintained and affectionately nicknamed _Grandma's Thunderbird_ —which they keep lying around the hangar for such occasions as occasional trips to New Zealand, or the Australian coast at a push. Refueling and preflights will eat up another twenty minutes. Then there's the flight itself. Allowing for decent weather—which is by no means a guarantee—he _can_ get home in two hours, but that's only if he flies like he really _means_ it, and pushes the engines past the point they really like to be pushed, such that Grandma will give him hell.

Of course, there's a whole lot of hell waiting for him on the island already.

He can't just _not_ go home. But neither can he leave Penelope like this, fast asleep and exhausted, anemic and _pregnant_ , still half-naked beneath the blankets except for his favourite lucky t-shirt, though he's starting to think that maybe all the luck's been worn out of it, if he's the sort of stupid idiot bastard who accidentally gets his girlfriend pregnant on the very first try.

Lucky underwear might've actually been to blame for that one.

Possibly he shouldn't be relying on garment-based luck in the first place.

Possibly he should be thinking of more important things than whether or not he should be blaming his underwear for getting Penelope pregnant. Like whether or not he's going to make it home for midnight.

But it's hard to think with her beside him, because when he looks at her, the only logical decision seems to be that he should stay. He _can't_ stay. If life were much simpler than it is, he could just lie here and watch her sleep, but life is instead extremely complicated, and he's supposed to be back on the island in five hours, and his extremely complicated life is supposed to resume as normal, even though everything about it has changed.

One problem at a time.

In the short term, he decides that he should probably have a shower. Just to get some distance, clear his head, just so he can sort through and think about his options. He doesn't even know if she'll want him to tell anyone. Maybe the best option _is_ just to pretend things are normal, until instructed to do otherwise. Before he leaves—if he's even leaving in the first place—they're going to need to talk.

But for now, he lets her sleep.

Tugging the blankets up around her shoulders, he gets up and ducks into the bathroom. This is all dramatically dark slate tile from floor to ceiling, heated from beneath. The shower is walk-in style, walled closed with a sliding glass door. There's a low bench built into the far end of it, tiled in the same dark stone, as well as tidy little niches in the wall for soap and shampoo. Gordon leaves the bathroom lights low and the door half-open, and turns on the water, a rainfall showerhead filling the room with rising clouds of warm, soothing steam and gentle white noise. For the first few minutes, he just stands in silence, soaking wet and empty-headed, and probably wasting time.

Then there's a soft little knock on the shower door.

He's tried to keep everything quiet, not that he'd thought there was much chance of waking her, but she's woken up anyway and followed him into the bathroom. Her silhouette through the steamy glass is clearly absent his bright blue t-shirt, so her intentions are fairly obvious. He's still not exactly thrilled that she's out of bed again.

But apparently the talk they have to have is happening here and now.

" _Penelope_ ," he sighs, stopping just short of exasperation as he slides the door open, a cloud of steam escaping to envelope her and fog up the bathroom mirror. Still, he reaches out a hand to take hers and pull her inside, into the little haven of warmth and water, soft sound and near darkness. "Weren't you sleeping?"

"I woke up. You were gone."

"Just to the shower, hon."

Penelope shrugs, and steps into the cascade of warm water, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as it runs down her body. Her expression is neutral, but she's still visibly exhausted, swaying slightly where she stands. The last thing Gordon wants is for her to keel over again, and so he steps closer, and gently puts his arms around her, so she can lean her weight against him.

She takes the cue immediately and lays her head against his chest, wraps her arms around his torso so that her palms rest against his shoulder blades. She sighs softly and he reaches up to stroke a hand through her hair, wet and heavy and plastered against the back of her neck. "I thought you'd left," she says, so quietly that he can barely hear her above the sound of falling water, and yet with such heartbreak in her voice that he can only hold her closer still and press a kiss against her forehead.

"No, Pen, never. I wouldn't do that to you, c'mon."

"But you're going to leave."

She's got him there. Gordon hesitates. "I…I mean, I don't know. No. Augh…but, maybe? I'm supposed to head back to the island for midnight, yeah, but I don't _want_ to. And I _won't_ if you need me to stay. Just say the word, Penny, and I—"

She interrupts him, taking a rather shaky deep breath and seeming to steel herself before she says, "I think you probably should."

He balks immediately at that. "I don't _have_ to—"

But she shakes her head. "Your family's expecting you. And there are things they need to know, dearheart."

That might be true, but there's no way in a million years his family's expecting the news he's about to bring home. This is going to shake Tracy Island and the Tracy family to its very foundations, because if there's one thing his family handles poorly, it's sudden, major change.

"You want me to tell them?" he asks, just to be absolutely sure he's reading her correctly. "About…that you're pregnant?"

She nods, sighing quietly, and doesn't lift her head from his shoulder, though she does start to trail her fingers absently up and down his spine. "I don't know what's going to happen next," she tells him, and there's a raw honesty in her voice that makes her sound especially small and vulnerable, "but I know that whatever does happen, my love, I'm going to need you. And I can't ask you to keep this from your family, because they're going to need to know _why_. I need you to tell them, darling. I can't face up to this without you."

And as she says it, he knows beyond a doubt that she's right.

But he still holds her tighter and bows his face to her shoulder, and more than anything wishes he didn't have to go.

* * *

Now that he's leaving, there seems to be barely any time before he really has to get gone. It's nearly eight o'clock. Half an hour out of the city, another hour out to the airstrip, two hours back to the island, and that's only if he's lucky, flying at night through whatever the weather is over the South Pacific. And luck is something that seems to be wearing a little thin for both of them, just the same way time is running short. He's probably going to be late getting home.

But he would've stayed if she'd asked, and here and now it's enough that she knows that, because they're both well-aware of the reasons he needs to leave.

A curious calm seems to have settled over her. Possibly she's finally too worn out for any sort of strong emotion, because she feels floaty and untethered and unconcerned by anything, though there's a certain faded wash of melancholy all through her, at the notion of being left alone. It's not likely to last. Penelope expects to sleep for approximately the next twelve hours, and then make her way home to London, for the advised appointment with her own doctor.

She wonders what the next twelve hours will be like for Gordon. Probably substantially less peaceful than hers will be.

And perhaps that's why he's lingering, taking his sweet time as he gets himself dressed again, this time in jeans and a flamboyantly floral printed hoodie, bromeliad flowers and palm leaves scattered over an ivory backdrop. It's actually rather tasteful, after a fashion, and it certainly suits him. Penelope sits on the bed, halfway tucked back in, and watches him refastening his watch around his wrist. She's retained custody of his bright blue t-shirt, and though it's a poor match for her lacy little thong, she doesn't especially intend to give it back. It's the closest she'll get to getting to sleep with him, after all.

But as she takes a deep breath, leaning back against the headboard, it still smells of him. As a consolation prize, she could do worse.

"My boyfriend knocked me up and all I got was this lousy t-shirt," she says aloud, draws his attention from where he's started hunting for his shoes. These are the tomato-red hightops he was wearing when she arrived, and they shouldn't be hard to find. "Under the bed, darling."

He drops to his knees at the bedside, scoops his shoes out from underneath, and remains seated on the floor as he pulls them on. "Is that what we're saying?" he asks, with a wry twist of his expression, looking younger than his age as he ties his shoes. He looks up at her from where he sits on the floor, leaning back on his hands. "Is that what I'm supposed to tell my family? _That's_ what we're going with? ' _Knocked you up_ '? That's the preferred nomenclature?"

French again. Penelope shrugs. "Whatever gets the point across, I suppose."

"I mean, not a lot of ambiguity there."

Penelope nods. "Fairly unambiguous, yes."

"You can't be just a little bit pregnant. Either you are or you aren't. And you are."

"I am," she agrees solemnly. "That happened."

Gordon nods, and a flicker of consternation crosses his features. "I feel like it should count for something that, like, apparently it only had to happen _once_."

"Twice," she corrects absently.

He's not about to let that stand, apparently. "Once with a margin of error."

"I don't know if that's how that works."

He sighs, then scoots over to lean against the mattress. If she were a little closer to the edge of the bed, he'd probably put his head in her lap, as he laments, "I should've bought a lottery ticket."

Penelope reaches out to push her fingers through his hair, as she asks, "What would you need with a lottery ticket?"

"…well, I mean, what're the odds that I'd get you _pregnant_?"

"Evidently about one in two."

He sighs again, shakes his head. "I could've been a _millionaire_."

"You're a fifth part of a legacy of _billions_ , darling."

"Well…yeah. But a _millionaire_ , though."

She shrugs, caught up in the easy rhythm of familiar, reassuring banter, and too tired to have really thought about what she's saying when she says, "I suppose you'll have to settle for being a father, instead."

At that Gordon sits up straight, looks up at her—maybe a little more sharply than he realizes—to fix her with that bright, brown-eyed stare. " _Am_ I gonna be a father?" he asks, as though she could possibly know one way or the other, when the news is still only hours old. Her options, as they stand, are still vague, intangible things, that still seem like they should be the result of choices someone _else_ has made. She hasn't really thought about it. She doesn't have the energy to think about it now.

And so she can only shake her head, rather helplessly, and tell him, "…I don't know, darling."

Gordon backs off immediately, and his gaze drops as he rubs at the back of his neck, looking away. He's hasty to backtrack, making excuses as he says, "Right. No, I mean—yeah. Of course you don't. You wouldn't. And I didn't think—I mean—that's…I don't _need_ you to know. Just…it was just the way you said it…"

It's only been seconds, and Penelope scarcely remembers what was just said. She's hit her limits, gone charging past them, and now exists in a hazy, borderless region beyond the bounds of exhaustion. "My love, I am so very tenuously coherent right now, please don't listen too closely to anything I might say."

"Because you're exhausted," he says, stating the extremely obvious.

"Yes," she agrees simply. "And you're going to be late getting home if I don't tell you to go."

He picks himself up off the floor, then, but only to sit back down on the bed beside her, taking her hand and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. "Promise me you'll get some sleep?"

"Promise me you'll fly safe?"

"I always fly safe. _You_ , however, somehow manage to keep bouncing back into consciousness, well past the point that _I_ would've been laid the fuck out. Get some sleep, Penelope. Please." He lifts her hand to kiss her fingers, old-fashioned and gentlemanly as he goes on, "I'm gonna get Tracy-1 out here to give you a lift back to London, whenever you want it. And a car service lined up with the front desk. And I'm gonna have someone bring you breakfast tomorrow morning."

This is all very sweet, but nothing she couldn't have managed herself, and so as his hand comes up to absently brush a strand of hair from her forehead, she can't help objecting, "I _can_ take care of myself, darling."

"Yeah. But I love you and you're pregnant and if I can't stay here to take care of you myself, then you're at least gonna let me make your life a little easier while I'm gone. It's not for _you_ , Pen. It's to make me feel just a tiny little bit better about leaving."

She catches his wrist and kisses his palm, then leans her face against his hand. "Needs must, my love."

"Yeah." He shifts a little closer, reaches out to pull her into his arms, folding her up into an embrace and sighing into her hair. He holds her for probably longer than he really should, when she really needs to sleep, and he really needs to leave. But before she can gently push him away to tell him so, he clears his throat and his voice is quiet and uncertain in her ear, as he says, "I'm not sure which one of us is supposed to promise that this is all gonna be okay—I don't feel like I can tell you that, because Pen, I really don't know—but I'd try, if you'd return the favour."

"Oh, darling," she murmurs, and pulls back, but only so she can reach up and put both hands on his face. "Of course it's going to be all right, Gordon. We'll figure it out."

He sounds tremendously young and there's an unmistakable tremor of emotion in his voice as he says, "I'm sorry I got you pregnant, Penny."

Penelope kisses him. "Well," she says, smiling softly. In spite of everything, she absolutely can't bear to see him sad, "I was there. It was something like a team effort."

He just shakes his head, disregards her attempt at a joke to lighten the mood. "I should've—if I'd just—"

"Shh. I wouldn't change anything that's happened between us, my love." And maybe acknowledging it for the first time herself, she gently takes his hand, pulls it down and between them, to rest against the curve of her belly. Even through the fabric of his t-shirt—with the word "Lucky!" emblazoned ironically across the front—she can feel the warmth of his hands. "Not even this," she tells him. She surprises herself with just how much she means it.

And then there's nothing left to do, except kiss him goodbye.


	34. landfall

There's a storm over the island. A great big towering thing. Not as scary as it looks, probably, but Scott's still standing at the window, watching the skies, because his little brother's flying home through it.

Gordon's late.

Only by an hour, and with Tracy Island all hemmed in by wind and rain and billowing cumulonimbus clouds, with lightning tearing bright along their edges, it's not surprising. But they've still got comms and they're still in contact and his GPS still works, and he's nearly home. His last transmission to the villa had been that he was just entering the island's airspace, on final approach to TB2's broad, forgiving runway. Last one home after a long day off.

Not that anyone else had left in the first place.

Gordon's late, but Scott's not mad, because his little brother was right. Twenty-four hours of downtime, exactly what they'd all needed.

John's upstairs, sleeping, going into his fourteenth hour. After six hours spent helping Scott catch up on paperwork, Scott's happy to let John catch up on however much sleep his little gravity-addled heart desires. Alan's also upstairs, _supposed_ to be sleeping, but Scott's pretty sure he heard the telltale clatter of a mechanical keyboard and the light flickering beneath the bottom of the bedroom door had been out of sync with the lightning outside. Scott had left him to it. Virgil's downstairs, not that it matters where Virgil is or what Virgil's doing, because Virgil's off the roster. And Gordon's just touched down on the runway, taxiing right into the hangar, carved into the island's craggy cliffs.

Over his shoulder from where he watches out the window, the central comm hub chimes softly, as their grandmother's Cessna registers its return, safe on the island and tucked up where it belongs.

And with the last of his brothers home, Scott turns from the window. The villa is dark, and the lounge seems especially so, but Scott knows his way through it blindfolded, and anyway, the occasional flash of lightning illuminates the space. The rumble of thunder that follows is still a few seconds distant, as the storm makes its way slowly across the South Pacific. Soon it's going to hit the island properly, Gordon's only just outflown the worst of it, probably lost time in the act of skirting nimbly around its edges. And in a forty-six year old Cessna, no less.

Of course, Scott's little brother is a hell of a pilot. Admittedly that runs in the family, but it's still worth mentioning.

And Scott's made his way to the back of the lounge, around the massive bulk of the rarely used fireplace to the more frequently patronized little wet bar tucked away behind, to fix his little brother a drink.

That was the agreement, after all. The bargain struck in exchange for twenty-four hours of downtime; that at the end of it, they'd sit down and have a beer together. Or a tequila sunrise. Or a banana daiquiri. Or whatever the hell else Gordon might want, except Scott flat out refuses to make a green appletini, and wouldn't know how anyway.

The drink's not really the important part of this exchange, anyway.

Because they need to talk. And they've needed to talk for a while now, and if Scott flatters himself that he's usually pretty good at talking to his brothers, somehow, he's never quite gotten the trick of talking to Gordon. Usually that's Virgil's department. Not that it should be particularly difficult. Ask anybody, usually the trick with Gordon is getting Gordon to _shut up_. Not lately. Even for as much as they've been working, there's been a curious quantity of radio silence from Gordon, until last night's late night encounter, nearly twenty-four hours ago.

Behind the bar, Scott hooks the instep of his foot against the bottom of the door of the mini fridge beneath the counter. It pops open, flooding a frosty argon chill around his ankles, along with the brightest light in the room. He pulls out a bottle of beer: American, craft. Technically an import to their craggy little island. Picked up by the case any time any of them have occasion to be back stateside, because there's really nothing else that'll do at the end of a long, hard day's work. He pops the bottle cap off, disregarding a readily available bottle opener, and hooking the edge of it against the sharp corner of the counter before giving it a sharp, practiced little strike with the heel of his hand. The cap clatters to the floor, lost in the dark, to be stepped on and sworn at by the next person who wanders back here looking for a beer while barefoot. Probably Virgil. Scott prefers to have his shoes on when he drinks. He leans against the countertop and takes a sip, pregaming both their drink and their forthcoming conversation, by thinking about his little brother.

Because maybe it's just the job, or the weeks of overwork that have gone along with it, but lately Scott's detected something unnaturally guarded about Gordon, where Gordon's usually a wide-open book. In large print, with simple words and colourful pictures. A pop-up book of a person, easy to read.

Not lately, though. And Scott knows it for an empirical fact: something's up with Gordon. There's something that needs talking about, badly enough that they're actually sitting down to talk about it, deliberately and on purpose. Which is a very grown-up thing to do, for somebody like Gordon, so Scott's generously doing him the favour of not speculating about what it might be, and treating their upcoming conversation like a blank slate.

And so instead, as he waits, he thinks about his little brother, and how far he's come and how much there is to be proud of. Despite his penchant for attention, and particularly the region near the center of it, there's a lot that's easy to forget about Gordon, and a lot that he doesn't like people to remember. If the members of their family can each be considered as the sum total of their individual life experiences, then Gordon's got enough going on that by some metrics he's probably outlived _Scott_ at this point. His little brother still drinks candy-flavoured liquor and needs to be nagged to clean his room. He proudly owns a pair of footie pajamas and watches Saturday morning cartoons while wearing them. He's the careful curator of a rainbow coloured collection of crazy straws, and these unironically adorn the top shelf of the bar.

But he's fully twenty-five years old, and likes attention the least when he's working his hardest, which is something Scott finds very admirable. And despite the small, deep down part of him that gets a little melancholy at the thought of Gordon finally growing up, Scott still finds himself looking forward to having a drink and a conversation with his brother, like a pair of actual adults.

And as there's the familiar creak of familiar footsteps on the stairs up to the lounge, Scott polishes off his beer and drops the bottle into a waiting slot in the bartop. No need to tip his hand.

The top of the staircase isn't actually visible from the bar, with the bulk of the fireplace in the way, so Scott hears his brother before he sees him. Gordon walks fairly softly, with a lighter step than Virgil and a shorter stride than John, but Scott still knows what he's listening to. He hears his brother hit the hardwood at the top of the stairs, then circle around the outside of the sunken living room, skirting his usual shortcut. Most of the lounge isn't visible from the bar, but their father's desk is. And when he comes into view, that's where Scott watches Gordon stop.

And there's a sliver of a second where he wants to call out, to get his brother's attention, but he catches himself. Lightning flashes overhead, bright through the windows of the villa, and though the rumble of thunder due to follow it is still far off, Scott finds himself caught in that moment of illumination, before darkness falls again, at the sight of his brother's face.

Scott's not sure he's ever seen Gordon look so much like their father.

The slow roll of thunder snaps him out of it as his eyes adjust to the dark again, but for a moment it seems like Gordon's just vanished. It takes Scott a second to realize that he's sat down, in Dad's chair, and slumped forward over the desktop with his head buried in his arms. There's a big leather pad atop the desk, more comfortable than it has any right to be, for being only a quarter inch thick, and Scott's suffered the indignity of falling asleep there more than once. It's a new look on Gordon, though, and Scott wonders if this is what it looks like when it happens to him. Probably not. Gordon's shorter than Scott is and shorter than their father was, and Dad's big desk chair—all dark wood and black leather—makes him look small. And terribly, tremendously young.

That illusion is dispelled only a few moments later, as Gordon shoves himself back upright with a slightly-too-sharp intake of breath, and reaches down, opens the lower right hand drawer, and withdraws the bottle of bourbon waiting notoriously therein. The thick glass of the bottom of the bottle thuds dully against the leather desktop, and there's a soft, liquid "pop" as the cork comes out. There's another shuddering deep breath, and when Gordon drinks, he doesn't actually bother with a glass.

Scott's aware that he should probably intervene. Casually, carefully, just circle around from behind the fireplace with an " _oh, there you are_ " and a cheery " _started without me?_ ", and catch his little brother in the act of knocking back about three fingers' worth of their father's brand of bourbon.

He's not sure if it's cunning or cowardice that has him fade slowly back instead, away from the bar and back through the door behind it, into the corridor that circles around the back of the lounge and leads to the stone stairways, cut into the cliffside itself, and up into the upper half of the villa. It's an advantage to these that they don't creak even a little bit as Scott climbs a few steps up, though he's careful to make extra noise as he makes his way back down, pretending he's coming from all the way upstairs. He shuffles his feet and steps more heavily than usual and pretends to be mildly surprised as he rounds the corner into the lounge and discovers Gordon at their father's desk. Standing now. No bottle of bourbon in sight, and still with his overnight bag hanging from one shoulder.

"Saw you got back," he says, casual. "We still on for that drink, Gordon?"

"Was just gonna see where you were," Gordon answers, gesturing vaguely at their father's desk and the hidden away console therein. "Am I the last one home?"

"You're the only one who left," Scott informs him, and makes his way (back) to the bar behind the fireplace, as he corrects himself, "I mean, other than Kayo, but she was gone before you were, and she's been in the wind for a while now. Some GDF thing. I hope she's done soon, we could really use another pair of hands around here."

"You're telling _me_."

There's another dull thud as Gordon drops his bag in the middle of the floor and wanders over. Scott watches out of the corner of his eye while he busies himself with ice cubes and glasses, and wonders if he detects just the slightest suggestion of a stumble in his brother's step. Maybe this conversation is going to turn out to be about some extremely stealthy alcoholism, because if he weren't actively aware of the fact that his little brother's been drinking, he wouldn't be able to tell. It's common knowledge in their family that Gordon's kind of a lightweight. But maybe that's a dodge, because as he seats himself at the bar atop a barstool, the two and a half shots of bourbon don't really seem like they've hit him yet.

Scott continues to play it cool, and continues to pretend like he's not maybe a little bit more worried than he was before. "So what's your poison?" he asks, expecting something sweety and fruity and more mixer than booze, so that he can make sure this second drink goes a little easier on his brother than the first must have. "There's margarita mix in the fridge and Virg picked up some real tequila last time he was in that part of the world."

"Nah."

"I think there's still a couple cans of coke in the kitchen, and about half a bottle of that one spiced rum you like. With the squid on the bottle?"

"It's a kraken. And no, thanks."

Maybe Gordon doesn't actually want another drink. "Wanna beer?" Scott tries again, pulling the fridge open again and pulling out a bottle for himself, then a second one as a suggestion.

Gordon doesn't even dignify this with an answer, leaning his elbows on the bar top and then asking, oh-so-casually, "Is there still a bottle of Dad's bourbon in his desk? Or did you polish that off while you were getting through the rest of the red tape?"

The conversation they're supposed to have is turning into something of a chess game, as Scott returns both beers to the fridge and rests his hands on the top of the bar. "Dad's desk is like, twenty feet away, and there's plenty of booze right _here_ ," he counters.

This isn't off to the world's best start. Gordon scoffs. "The service here is really lousy, see if I come back."

"I mean…" Scott hedges again, giving his brother another chance to back down. "It's not really your usual,though, is it kiddo?"

" _Kiddo_ ," Gordon echoes, and the slightly belligerent note in his voice is either disbelief or the leading edge of Dad's bourbon. And then, "D'you have some kinda monopoly on missing our father that I don't know about? Is there a sign posted somewhere? Because I can back off, if that's the problem."

"No problem," Scott says hastily, and circles out from behind the bar and returning to their father's empty desk. He retrieves the bottle, emptier than last he left it, and instead of the backside of the bar, he seats himself beside his little brother. He puts the bottle on the bar top, reaches over for the glasses and the bucket of ice he'd pulled out of the freezer. "Just, if we're gonna have a drink, figured it oughta be something you actually _enjoy_. It's already gonna push you off the roster for another twelve hours." He's quick to add, "Not that that's a problem."

Gordon's tensed slightly where he sits, since Scott sat next to him, and it's hard not to notice the way he's hunched over the bar, shoulders ratcheted up, already defensive. His nod is brief and his gaze is distant and his voice is clipped when he says,"Yeah."

Scott pours a couple of drinks. Singles. With ice. He places Gordon's glass in front of him and reaches for his own, ready to lift it in some inane little toast before they can get down to brass tacks—but before he can even get the tumbler off the coaster, Gordon's already thrown his drink back, bonked himself on the nose with the ice cubes, which whirl around the inside curve of the glass as he puts it back down. This time Scott's close enough to hear the little draw of breath, catch the slight grimace as it cuts across Gordon's features. There's a brief flare of nostalgia for ten minutes ago, back before Scott really started to worry about his little brother.

"…all right, then," he says at length, because it seems wrong not to say _something_. He gently knocks the bottom of his glass against the rim of Gordon's, and downs the whole thing in a similar fashion. He clears his throat, far more experienced in the process of drinking Dad's whiskey, and decides enough is enough. "I guess there's something we need to talk about."

Scott wonders if it's the same thing they'd needed to talk about, twenty-four hours ago, or if something's changed. Gordon's attitude definitely has, and it's jarring, almost unsettling.

Gordon's wrapped both of his hands around the glass in front of him, and he stares at the two ice cubes melting slowly inside, rather than looking up at Scott. He nods, briefly, and Scott watches him swallow. There's a brightness to his eyes that seems like it might be more than just the liqour. Scott's about to reach out, lay a careful hand on his kid brother's shoulder, but he freezes when Gordon manages to summon up his voice, soft and deceptively neutral—

"Penny's pregnant."

It was maybe a mistake to go into this conversation without trying to guess what it was going to be about.

But in Scott's defense, he would never have guessed that. This information comes from so far out of left field that he doesn't immediately realize just who the hell Gordon's actually talking about. It takes him a moment to remember that Lady Penelope exists, and could in _theory_ be referred to as " _Penny_ ", though the nickname sounds wrong in his ears. But the notion that she could be _pregnant_ —

He hadn't even known she was _seeing_ anybody, let alone seeing anyone seriously enough to get _pregnant_. Admittedly, it's very much like her to keep that sort of thing entirely to herself. As far as the spectrum of public versus private lives go, Penelope somehow manages to exist on both sides of the dichotomy. For all the work she manages to do in secret, it's somehow not uncommon to be in any prominently English-speaking corner of the globe and to happen to see her Ladyship gracing the cover of a magazine.

And that's not really _surprising_. Penelope is pretty and palatable and pleasing to listen to, and Scott's not unfamiliar with the minor cult of celebrity her ladyship inspires on both sides of the Atlantic. Even in _Jane_. Who has, on more than one occasion, not-so-subtly asked if Scott could ever swing an introduction or an invitation to some charity gala, where they could both go stag and just happen to meet each other on the dance floor, and then pretend to sneak off for a one-night stand, after Scott's introduced her to her ladyship. Jane is mildly obsessed. Lady Penelope's name is on the front of a bottle of perfume on her bedroom dresser, her picture is on the cover of a tabloid in the bathroom. Scott recalls chuckling lightly at both the fact that Jane _reads_ tabloids, and the fact that this particular edition had decided to cite the empire waistline of a particularly unfortunate red pantsuit as ironclad evidence that her ladyship was at least three month's pregnant.

He wonders what Jane would make of the fact that it's true.

 _If_ it's true.

Ironically, Jane would also probably have a better idea about the likelihood of this kind of thing than Scott does.

And then, there's the bewildering question of just why the hell _Gordon_ would know.

"Wow," Scott says, mostly out of the acute awareness that quite a few moments have gone by, without him saying anything. "That—that's, uh. Huh."

Gordon doesn't say anything, staring blankly at his glass. Scott doesn't know what to say either.

Rain starts the pound on the roof of the villa, as the storm hits properly. It had just been distant thunder and lightning before now. But the wind and the rain are starting to pick up, and though the villa is just about as weatherproof as it can possibly get, and sits beneath the hulking shadow of craggy, towering cliffs, it's a pretty big storm. They're definitely still going to feel it. Lightning flashes and only a moment or so later, thunder rolls along after it. Scott doesn't actually notice.

If it's true, that's going to take Lady Penelope off the roster. For the next little while, at least, and quite possibly forever. _If_ it's true. Not that they've had much call for her lately—the overlap between the things IR needs Penelope to deal with has dropped off considerably, since the Hood and his antics ceased to be a problem in the world at large. In fact, Scott doesn't think he's even so much as _spoken_ to Penelope since way back in January, when she'd thrown Grandma's eightieth birthday party. The last he'd heard of what was going on in her sphere had been—

February.

Specifically the _fourteenth_ of February. Specifically the birthday that would've broken his little brother's heart. Some Valentine's Day _that_ must've been.

And Scott knows enough about pregnancy to know that if Penelope knows she's pregnant, then she's probably _been_ pregnant for a while now. Probably about a month at least. _Definitely_ since before the fourteenth of February. However this happened, whoever it's happened _with_ —he's been in Penelope's life for longer than anyone's realized.

Maybe Gordon most of all.

" _Oh_ ," Scott says aloud, coming abruptly to a realization about his brother that had slipped beneath the radar before now, and it must be the reason she'd told him. Because this is, _very_ definitively, an end to any possible chance of anything ever happening between Penelope and Gordon. Not that there'd ever _been_ a chance, but Scott's little brother is a sucker for an underdog story. It's a poignant truth about Gordon; he believes if he pours enough of his heart into the things that matter to him, that they're just bound to go his way in the end. It's not true about Penelope. _Can't_ be true about Penelope, and for so many reasons. This is just the last on a very long list of them.

And even with the bulk of eighteen—nineteen, now— _very_ busy days since Paris, it's possible that Gordon's still feeling it. Scott hadn't really thought about it at the time, just how much it might actually hurt his little brother, to be firmly, flatly rejected by Lady Penelope. It's strange to think that it's become something he and Gordon have in common—one of his earliest memories of Penelope is of the way the lady says _no_. For Scott, at the time, it had been more of an amusing novelty than anything else, just how indignant she'd gotten at the very prospect. In the five years that have passed since then, he's only come to understand just how right she was and how wise she'd been to turn him down flat, to mark out those boundaries right from the beginning. Their working relationship would've suffered, in the company of anything else.

"Shit, Gordie," he says, and at long last his hand finds its way to his little brother's shoulder, gives a firm, sympathetic squeeze. He feels a bit more confident in what he needs to say, now that he understands what his brother must be feeling. "I'm sorry, bud. I know how you've always had a crush on her, and that's a rough kind of thing to have to grow out of. But that's—I mean—at least that's an end to it, though, right? Time to start moving on. Obviously a lot's gonna change, but maybe that's for the best? We're already seeing a lot less of her, lately. And I guess if that's what she needed to tell you to make you understand that it wouldn't have worked—couldn't _ever_ have worked… "

He doesn't realize just how wrong he is, until Gordon takes a deep breath and corrects an incorrect assumption.

"I got Penny pregnant."

 _That_ makes absolutely _no_ fucking sense.


	35. thunder

Gordon's never fully understood the term "liquid courage". Possibly because most of the occasions in his life that call for bravery also require him to be stone cold sober and that's always served him just fine. Booze as a component of bravery seems a little bit ludicrous. He's never given it a great deal of thought, because he's never really needed to. Getting drunk never makes him feel any braver than usual.

What he feels now—as his older brother stares at him and the bourbon starts to hit—isn't exactly what he'd call courage, anyway.

It's different. Wildly, disconcertingly different, a dizzy swell of almost giddy nihilism, the sudden conviction that nothing Scott could say or do in response to this news could possibly matter, compared to the magnitude of the news itself. Especially when all he's done so far is gape, wide-eyed and bewildered, as Gordon swirls a slowly melting pair of ice cubes around the inside of his glass. However shocked Scott is, he's still one whole degree removed from the actual situation, which that Penelope is approximately six weeks pregnant with Gordon's child.

It's still so surreal to even imagine. Even his wildest, most fanciful daydreams about a life with her had never gotten as far as the prospect of _children_. He'd imagined _marrying_ her, but that had been a fantasy on par with owning a unicorn, and reserved exclusively for his longest, loneliest nights. Particularly the ones spent lying awake next to people he knew he couldn't ever actually _love_ , so long as _she_ was in the picture.

And now he's gotten her pregnant.

Gordon's had hours now to get used to the idea, but the truth still butts fuzzily against the surface of his brain like a bumblebee trapped behind a window pane, without a hope in hell of breaking through. He'd spent the whole three hour flight home, alone, with that reality creeping at the edge of his thoughts as he'd tried to concentrate on flying. The Cessna is old enough that the autopilot's a little unreliable, especially around the kind of weather that stacks up in the South Pacific sometimes. Like the towering storm Gordon had raced all the way home, the same one that's about to rend the heavens open over the island. There'd been no room to divide his thoughts between the rigours of flying and the unbelievable reality that he's gotten Penelope _pregnant_.

Scott can't seem to quite get a handle on the idea either, and he sounds nothing less than completely stunned as he says, "You…you _what_?"

Gordon swallows, but it's the bourbon that does the talking, smoother and steadier than he actually feels, as he answers, "I think you heard me."

Of course, Scott's got bourbon on his side, too. And in Scott's case this is an old, reliable alliance. Tried and tested and true under fire. There's a note of warning in his tone, as he says, "If I heard you, Gordon, then I cannot fucking _believe_ you."

There are only a handful of ways this was ever going to go, and honestly this is pretty much what Gordon had expected, which was the reasoning behind the bourbon in the first place. It's been a few minutes now since the first drink, which was rapidly, impulsively chased by a second, because apparently staggering lapses in judgement are just a thing that happens to Gordon now. Liquid courage, yeah, _right_. In the descending haze of dizziness and with the last of his diminishing cognition, he reflects that it's been hours since he's eaten anything, not to mention he's a bit of a lightweight to begin with. He'd been drinking that first night with Penelope, too, when he'd needed to work up the nerve to tell her how he felt. Maybe things would've gone differently if he'd just stayed sober, tried to be the right kind of brave. Maybe this wouldn't have happened. Too late now.

"Tell me you're kidding," Scott prompts, breaking the silence that's fallen between them. His voice has grown soft, but somehow that's worse. "About all of it, but especially that last part. Because you _didn't_ —"

"I _did_ though. We did. Me and her, we—"

"You and _Penelope_."

Gordon nods. "Yeah."

Scott shakes his head, like it's all still too much for him to believe. "You're telling me _you_ hooked up with Penelope. And got her _pregnant_."

Gordon knows the facts of the matter, but it's still excruciating to hear them repeated back, and his voice has gotten choked at the back of his throat, so it's all he can do to nod his answer.

"Where? _When_? Is _this_ what you were doing in Paris?"

It very well could've been, but it wasn't. Gordon hasn't been able to look at his brother since telling him the truth, but now he feels his shoulders hunch, dropping further down over the bar top, as he stares into the empty glass still held in his hands, and wishes it were full again. The bourbon was objectively a bad idea, but probably still a better idea than telling Scott the truth. He should've practiced on Virgil, first. Or John. Alan. Anyone would've been better. "Not Paris."

"Then where the hell—"

Gordon cuts him off, before Scott can come to the obvious logical conclusion of the last time he would've seen Penelope, and figure out for himself that it had been in the aftermath of their grandmother's eightieth birthday party. "We got together back in January, we've been together ever since. Everybody else knows already. I just didn't know how to tell you."

If this admission gives Scott pause—if it makes him question what could've happened to their relationship, that Gordon hadn't felt like he could talk to Scott about this in the first place—it's for only the briefest moment, and it doesn't soften his attitude in the slightest. His voice is hard and cold and unforgiving when he answers, "And so _this_ is how I get to find out? _This_ is what you wanted to tell me?"

The bulk of the fireplace obscures the rest of the lounge, but Dad's desk is still visible and Gordon can't help staring at it, and wondering what could've gone differently. Twenty-four hours ago, he and Scott had agreed to have a conversation. It wasn't supposed to be _this_ conversation. He shakes his head, and wishes desperately that things could have stayed simpler than they are now. "This wasn't…I didn't mean to tell you _this_. I just—I just wanted to tell you about her. And me. And us, and how we're just actually _together_ now, even though I never, _ever_ thought we could be. But then when I saw her today—"

" _That's_ why you wanted time off? To see _Penelope_?" Scott shakes his head as Gordon looks up sharply, catching the note of contempt in his brother's voice for the first time, bordering on disgust. Something about the way Scott says her name makes Gordon's spine stiffen, and he can feel himself growing defensive, though what's happened is indefensible. Scott goes on, and this time the scorn is unmistakable, "There's only one reason _you_ ever go to Auckland. I guess _that_ hasn't changed."

Gordon feels like he's been knocked out of first person and into third; like whatever happens next will happen to someone else. He feels like he's hearing his own voice from a distance, as he has the temerity to warn his brother, "You get one chance, Scotty—just _one chance_ —not to be an asshole about this."

Before he can add the word _please_ —pathetic and desperate as it sounds—his brother's already off and running.

"An _asshole_ ," Scott echoes, disbelieving. "You've come home an _hour_ late, immediately gotten _drunk_ , told me you got Penelope _pregnant_ —when you _never_ should've been with her in the first place—and somehow in this scenario you think _I'm_ supposed to be the asshole? _You've_ done something so _monumentally fucking stupid_ …and you think the _problem_ is that I'm gonna be an asshole about it?"

Gordon doesn't answer. Overhead, rain pounds against roof, dulled in sound but pouring off in sheets as it gathers between the long panes of soundproofed glass. The lightning that tears across the sky is only moments ahead of the thunder, though the same tech that muffles the sounds of Thunderbirds muffles the sound of their namesake just as well. Inside, sound seems to get trapped, reverberating around the big empty space, and Scott's voice sounds louder than it actually is. The villa is dark. It's late. After one in the morning, everyone else in the household is sleeping, there's no one else around to hear that Scott's voice has risen to the point that he's almost shouting.

And Gordon doesn't need his brother's help to feel awful. For Penelope's sake he'd needed to be steady and practical and comforting and positive, but without her around, the brave face falls and his heart aches with guilt and remorse and doubt, and now the crushing weight of Scott's disapproval.

"It was an accident," he says, numb and dull and cliche, as though that truth isn't obvious, as though it could make any difference at all.

There's a scrape of metal on hardwood as Scott's barstool gets shoved back, and Scott gets to his feet. It's an unfortunate truth about Scott, but particularly about Scott with respect to Gordon, that he _looms_ a little, when he stands. He's tall, abnormally so, and on top of that, he insists on wearing his shoes in the house. Gordon's of average height—almost _exactly_ average height, at a generously measured 5'10". Gordon's never been self-conscious about this, exactly—but next to Scott, he clings to the statistic like a lifeline, a reminder that it's _Scott_ who's the freak in this scenario, at 6'3", pushing 6'4". Anybody would be reasonably afraid to have Scott towering over them, mad as hell, but Gordon has no choice but to follow his brother unsteadily to his feet, and face him properly.

Scott stalks away from the bar, pacing a few steps a few times over, before he turns back to Gordon again. Gordon manages not to cringe, because Scott's voice is cold and quietly furious as he asks, "And just what exactly do you plan to do about it?"

Gordon doesn't know. The news isn't even a day old yet. Internally he's still reeling from it, and it's too early to be sure much of _anything_ yet, other than the fact that Penelope's pregnant. He's sure that he needs more time to sort out his own feelings, but equally he knows his feelings don't really matter, compared to hers. Whatever happens next is her choice, and he's sure that he'll support her in whatever it is—but it's not his place to influence her one way or the other. So he's not really sure what Scott's asking, because as far as Gordon's concerned, the answer isn't his to provide.

He tries anyway, though it comes out more like a question than the answer Scott seems to be looking for. "…whatever she wants me to?"

Scott just shakes his head again, and his expression twists slightly, cast in an ugly shadow of contempt as he glowers down at Gordon. "I can believe that _you_ could be so goddamn irresponsible, but I'd _never_ have expected it from _her_. She can't _possibly_ want this to continue."

There's an ambiguity there, but neither aspect of it puts Scott in a favourable light. Gordon finds himself taken aback, knocked another degree out of himself. His spine grows rigid again and he straightens up slightly, still facing his brother. Scott might be talking about Gordon's relationship with Penelope, which Gordon hasn't and doesn't consider to be any of his eldest brother's goddamn business—or he might be talking about her pregnancy, in which case they might have a slightly more serious problem.

Liquid courage, maybe not—but there might be something to the notion of liquid insight, alcohol like engine grease in his brain, so that gears in his head turn a little differently, a little more easily, grind his thoughts up a little finer than usual. The dizzy sense of drunken detachment is useful, maybe, because it's given him some distance from all the turmoil he feels, and given him the chance to process what he _thinks_. Despite everything, there's a calm, strangely familiar logic about his actual thoughts. Penelope's pregnant. It's not actually that complicated and while it's going to change _everything_ —everything's always changing anyway. It's probably about time life threw them another. Scott hadn't even really seemed to have a problem with it, before—

And then something hard and sharp and entirely too real brings everything grinding to a halt, a realization that hits like a train, as Gordon stares at his brother, remembering what he'd said before, compared to what he's saying now.

"So," he starts, a little dazed by the idea as it starts to coalesce into understanding, as his voice tumbles out, running away from him, "…so, wait, though— _wait_ —when it was just 'Penny's pregnant'—then that was something for you to feel _sorry_ for me about, because you thought she found somebody else and it was somebody _serious_ and even if I'm in _love_ with her, this was all still just something I was just gonna have to suck up and get over. But…but _now_ , because you know about how it's _her_ and it's _me_ and because…because this would be _my_ kid— _you_ think that…that this ' _can't continue_ '? What the fuck are you saying, Scott?"

Scott's silence is terrible, because it seems to answer the question. He draws himself up, taller and taller still, and his shoulders square, and the set of his jaw makes him look so much like their father that Gordon feels an awful, black swell of grief and pain and longing for his dad—because Scott just shakes his head again, in a way Gordon hopes their father wouldn't have. "It shouldn't," he says, firm and righteous and stubborn. "Just because you've done this to her—"

 _That_ crosses a line.

"I _haven't_ done anything _to_ her!" Now Gordon's voice breaks as he shouts, but it doesn't stop him shouting some more, as he snaps abruptly back into himself, all anger and outrage at what Scott's dared to suggest. "I _love_ her, you _jackass_! We made a mistake, and maybe it was my fault more than hers, but we still made it _together_ , because that's what we _are_!"

The outburst makes Gordon feel weirdly better, but it only makes Scott curl his lip in disdain. "You're _drunk_ ," he accuses, not incorrectly, but with more judgment there than Gordon really deserves, considering what he has to deal with. "If you want proof of why this shouldn't be allowed to happen, Gordon, it's that _this_ is how you're handling it. Drunk off your ass and _screaming_ at me, because you've fucked up on a monumental scale. Because what you've _done_ is going to ruin her entire life."

Apparently there was another line beyond the first one, and Scott's just gone blasting past it, left Gordon reeling in his wake, staggered by just how callous and cold and borderline _hateful_ Scott's being about the whole thing. Gordon had known his big brother wouldn't be _happy_ —but he hadn't expected the searing, furious contempt. He hadn't expected the kind of language his brother's chosen, and it cuts deeper than he'd realized it could.

But not deep enough to stop him from rallying, and snarling back, "You don't _know_ anything about _her_ life and you don't know anything about _mine_!"

Overhead, lightning splits the sky and then a bare moment afterward, an explosion of thunder follows it. Loud enough to feel, even if the sound is made muffled and distant outside the villa. If nothing else, it makes Gordon feel like he's got the storm on his side, and facing off against Scott, he needs all the help he can get. His hands have clenched into fists and the tips of his fingers feel like they must be bruising his palms, and he has to restrain himself from crossing the space between them, getting into his brother's face, as Scott goes on—

"I know _you_ aren't ready to handle this. I know _she_ can't possibly want to. Not with _you_ , Gordon."

There's a third line. Scott crosses it, and the fury Gordon feels boiling up from the depths of his heart and soul is enough that his vision almost whites out. "Fuck you!"

The way Scott talks about the woman Gordon loves almost makes him _hate_ his brother. He's still over by the bar, and it's a base impulse, black and ugly, that has him fumbling across the countertop for the neck of the bottle that still stands sentinel between two empty glasses. Logic lags behind action as he whirls back towards his brother, and it's only as the bottle flies from his hand that he realizes just how badly he's lost control. Of this conversation, of his emotions, of everything.


	36. tempest

Virgil's just flipped his late-night grilled cheese sandwich for the first time, when the yelling upstairs starts in earnest.

Loud enough to hear from the kitchen on the floor below, but distant enough that he can't make out the words, or exactly who's doing the shouting.

Still, it's not like it's hard to guess. Gordon was late getting home from their impromptu twenty-four hours off. The last time Virgil had seen Scott, he was waiting up for their little brother, watching out the window. Virgil had hobbled discreetly past him, hadn't wanted to get involved. Scott, for his part, had mercifully let him pass.

But the sound of the argument is distant, its topic is predictable, and Virgil can maintain the deceptive personal fiction that he _can't_ , actually, hear his brothers fighting. Not over the sound of the rain pounding on the pool deck outside, at least. Of course, the windows are soundproofed against the periodic launches of assorted supersonic paramilitary aircraft, and the technology that keeps the sound _out_ is equally as good as keeping sound _in_ , reverberating around the cavernous open spaces of the villa—but Virgil can still _pretend_ he doesn't hear his brothers. The heavens have opened up, thunder and lightning chasing each other to and fro across the sky, above their very own tempest in a teacup. Virgil shifts his weight, leaning on one of his crutches, gives his grilled cheese sandwich a nudge with the edge of the spatula. Everyone knows the second side cooks faster than the first, after all, and it doesn't pay to be inattentive, even when one's brothers are tearing into one another on the next floor up.

It's been just shy of three weeks since Virgil broke his leg. Fractured tibia. Not severe, but he'll be four to six weeks healing up, and then it'll be a further four months of PT and careful handling before he's all the way better. The cast that covers his lower left calf is custom made, 3D printed from sturdy plastic, and apparently has the added, unexpected property of rendering him basically invisible to the rest of the household.

Or inconsequential, anyway.

And nobody _means_ anything by it, and cognitively Virgil _knows_ that—but the truth is, he's spent the past three weeks feeling oddly disconnected from the rest of the family's life at large. Being taken abruptly out of the ongoing, rigorous cycle of work, sleep, rinse, repeat has been jarring, to say the least. It's not that he has nothing to contribute—he's dutifully manned the comms for consultation purposes on at least half the missions his brothers have run—but it feels a little like they're humouring him, tolerating the presence of an outsider, and all the while quietly resenting the fact that he hasn't got his boots on the ground alongside them, figuratively or literally, though that's neither his fault nor his preference.

It's not true, of course, and Virgil _knows_ it's not true, mostly because he'd gone to John looking for reassurance after Gordon had gotten particularly short and sharp with him during a particularly stressful rescue in the Baltic Sea. He'd gotten a wry, blandly sardonic little pep talk about the fact that _of course_ everyone understands that he's still useful and valid and as much a member of IR as ever—it's just that emotions run high on the job and a perspective once removed from the situation at hand isn't always welcome. And naturally John would know.

There was a certain, documented irony in having had this talk while Virgil was sat on his ass on the couch in the lounge and John was midflight in his exosuit, spotting for Scott as he jetpacked around the precarious repair of a dangerously listing suspension bridge. Virgil had taken the hint and left them to it.

And so his life on the bench has lately been spent hobbling around the house on crutches, feeling useless and sullenly wishing their father's penchant had been for elevators rather than of the sweeping architectural curve of an elegant floating staircase, or winding steps hewn into corridors of solid rock. Or that he could've picked out an island that sprawled in a horizontal rather than a vertical dimension. There are, remarkably, only three elevators on Tracy Island, if one doesn't count the one Scott takes down to TB1 or the one John takes up to TB5. The first goes from the main floor up into the upper part of the house, back through the kitchen. Another goes down to the hangar from the villa, the last goes up to the Round House from the hangar. Both of these are, incidentally, the places where Brains is most likely to be found, though these days he's been preoccupied to the degree that Virgil feels as though joining him in his lab or his work shop is an unwelcome intrusion, and so he's rather reluctantly kept his distance.

Kayo hasn't been around much either.

Not that that matters. It's fine.

Virgil is trying very hard to remember that they don't have the kind of relationship where she would be deliberately avoiding him, but the only place he's been is the only place they have in common, so it's hard to understand why he hasn't seen more of her. She's been busy, but she's not usually _that_ busy. And even when they're _both_ busy, they still manage to run into each other at least a few times a month. It's not like he's unavailable. But it's fine. They see each other when they see each other, they hook up when they hook up, and everything's always fine between them, because there's not enough _there_ for anything to go wrong. It's an arrangement that works for both of them, and has for over a year now. Sometimes they have sex. That's the beginning and the end of it, and Virgil knows _that_ too.

And if there's been a poignant, melancholy ache about his existence that painkillers don't touch, ever since his stupid little brother somehow managed to stumble into a whirlwind romance with the love of his life—well. Green might be Virgil's colour, but he likes to think that the associated envy isn't. He's happy for Gordon—he wouldn't be much of a big brother if he weren't—really and truly. Gordon's got a bigger heart than just about anybody Virgil's ever met. He deserves to be in love with somebody.

So it's fine. For his part, for now, Virgil can satisfy late-night cravings for meaningful companionship with butter and salt and bread and cheese, and pretend like a sandwich will fill the hollow place right in the middle of him, which lately seems like a hole that whistles forlornly when the wind catches it just right.

Possibly it will take two sandwiches.

Virgil flips his grilled cheese onto a waiting plate and picks it up, then nearly drops it at the sound of shattering glass from the floor above. He's frozen in the moment of silence that follows, and then the yelling he'd thought was nothing to be concerned about picks up a level in volume and intensity and it's _definitely_ Scott. Virgil's not sure he can remember the last time he heard Scott get _this_ angry. He's pretty sure the last time Scott got this angry, someone had nearly been killed.

There's no pretending that he doesn't hear the shouting now.

After three weeks, he can manage his broken leg and his crutches and additionally a grilled cheese sandwich if he only needs to get as far as the kitchen table—but he can't get that same sandwich up a flight of stairs. Stairs are still a challenge at the best of times, which is deeply inconvenient when he's lying awake in bed at midnight, desperately craving a grilled cheese sandwich, and the kitchen is two flights of stairs distant. It's even worse when he's starting to wonder if he's going to need to keep his brothers from coming to blows, if they haven't already. He abandons his sandwich on the countertop with only a momentary twinge of mourning, and hops and swings his way over to the stairs. Getting up them is a Process, and he has to be careful not to hurry, or he'll go ass over teakettle back down the stairs and break his _other_ leg, before he's even had a chance to get between his brothers.

It's gotta be Scott and Gordon. John's asleep and Alan's obliterating his retinas with some marathon gaming session. Hobbling up the stairs, Virgil's not sure exactly what this is going to be about—though there's an obvious secret lurking in Gordon's life that Scott's not yet been privy to. Gordon's been surprisingly cagey about Penelope, for as much Virgil knows he loves her. The way his little brother feels about her ladyship is the work of long years of longing, ages of agony over their (not actually that substantial) age difference, and an uncharacteristically pessimistic belief about his odds of ever actually getting a chance with her. Which, in fairness, had been shared by just about everybody with even a peripheral awareness of Gordon's feelings about Penelope. Even if he's somehow managed to prove the broad assumption wrong—Gordon hasn't been shouting it from the mountaintops so much as he's been whispering it in back rooms, behind his hand in the hallway rather than with a megaphone on the roof.

Because apparently it's Scott that Gordon's been afraid of, and apparently with good reason. Their older brother appears at the top of the stairs before Virgil's even made it halfway up. He freezes in the act of getting himself from one stair to the next, as Scott glowers down at him from the top of the staircase, a towering shadow, illuminated briefly by a strike of lightning overhead.

"Did _you_ know about this?" he demands, and the contempt and the anger and the absolute disgust that blacken his tone are enough that Virgil's taken somewhat aback, left a little dumbfounded.

"…know about what?" he hedges, because what he knows about isn't nearly enough to provoke this kind of fury. He has to resist the impulse to get the hell out of Scott's way as he comes storming down the stairs, his step falling so hard that each cleverly engineered stair shakes with his passage.

Scott manages not to shove past Virgl and send him careening down the stairs, as he stops on the broad step beside him and snarls, " _Penelope_. And _Gordon_."

The vitriol with which Scott says their brother's name is something Virgil's never heard before, and he only just manages not to flinch. He definitely doesn't know anything about Penelope and Gordon that should've gotten this kind of rise out of Scott, even if Scott's the last one to know about the way the pair of them have gotten together. So it doesn't feel _exactly_ like a lie when he feigns confusion and deflects again, "…what about them?"

Scott just shakes his head, still disgusted, and continues storming down the stairs. "Ask him yourself," he calls over his shoulder, and then vanishes into the darkness of the kitchen below, leaving Virgil to continue his way upstairs.

It takes him another couple of minutes and leaves him a little bit winded (he's lost a hell of a lot of condition, prohibited from working out for the past three weeks), but he makes it to the top of the stairs. When he gets there, it turns out that he can't ask Gordon, because Gordon isn't there. He's not in the lounge, nor is he anywhere immediately in evidence—but Virgil catches a whiff of the sweet, smoky scent of bourbon on the air. This draws his attention to the bar, tucked away behind the fireplace, and it's there that he finds broken glass and a puddle of liquor, gleaming on the hardwood floor. The broken neck of the bottle still lies on the ground, and the telltale red wax seal identifies this as the remains of the bottle of Maker's Mark that usually lives in their father's desk drawer.

Gordon's gone. Scott came storming down to the kitchen, cutting off that escape route, so it seems likely that Gordon's probably fled upstairs. Either way, both of them are beyond Virgil's rather limited reach at the moment, and he slowly makes his way around the bar instead, trying to get a read on a scene that's missing its major players.

There are two glasses on the bar top, ice slowly melting in each. There's a low golden pendant light that hangs above the bar, and by the light of this, the shape of the splatter of whiskey on the floor makes it look like the bottle was hurled straight down at the floor, shattered on purpose. Virgil wonders which one of them threw it. Scott and Gordon both have tempers, that's absolutely true, but it looks like things had started out civilly enough. The pair of them have also been shouldering the bulk of IR's efforts out in the world, and both of them know it. If Virgil had to guess, he wouldn't be surprised if they'd sat down together for a quiet drink to toast the last of their twenty-four hours off, and things had somehow gotten out of hand. It's not like Scott or Gordon to crack under pressure—they're both too professional for that—but once they're off the clock, Virgil knows from experience that all bets are off.

Whatever this was, it must have escalated quickly. It usually takes a hell of a lot more than booze before his brothers will come to blows, and for an altercation to leave a bottle of Dad's bourbon (presumably less two glasses) violently shattered on the hardwood is almost unheard of. They're all responsible adults, and the tumultuous days of knockdown, bare-knuckled fights between a bunch of rambunctious boys trying to grow up around each other are long since over. Mostly. Sometimes, when things get really, really heated, there'll be some getting up in each other's faces, fingers jabbed against collarbones, and very occasionally maybe some shoving—but this seems different. The lounge is empty and quiet now, other than the muted rumble of the storm overhead, but Virgil remembers the distant shouting, and the terrible silence that had followed the sound of breaking glass. Dread creeps into him slowly, along with the realization that something's very, _very_ wrong, and he's too out of the loop to have any idea what it could be.

The stairs up from the main floor to the lounge are too well-engineered to creak, but it's quiet enough that Scott's footsteps are audible before he reaches the top of the stairs, and Virgil hop-skips out from behind the fireplace to face his older brother. Scott's still grim and and blackly furious, but a gingham kitchen towel over his shoulder and a hand broom and dustpan from the kitchen add an almost comical cast of domesticity to his reappearance. He's obviously come back to clean up the mess, though Virgil knows from experience that the scent of alcohol will linger in the air. He hobbles wordlessly out of the way as Scott crosses the room to clean up the mess, and it takes him a few moments to work up the nerve to ask, "What…Scott, what the hell happened?"

Scott's gotten down on his hands and knees, gingerly picking up the larger chunks of glass and putting them into the dustpan. He chuckles darkly at the question, and then answers, "Gordon fucked Penelope and now she's pregnant."

It's not like Scott to be unnecessarily crude, but his choice of language isn't what's shocking. Virgil hears himself gasp and if he didn't have to keep himself upright on crutches, he might be literally staggered by the news. He's almost not sure he heard correctly, but then, there's not a lot of room for ambiguity. And it immediately and entirely explains why Scott's so angry. "Oh, _shit_."

Scott drops another chunk of glass into the dustpan and then gestures to the mess he's in the middle of cleaning up, as he asks a sarcastic question, "Or did you mean what happened _here?_ Because what happened _here_ is that when I told him off for being an irresponsible little _idiot_ , he tried to throw a fucking bottle of bourbon at me about it."

"Jesus." This is a red flag, though Scott may not know enough to realize it. Gordon's got a reputation for being scrappy, but Virgil knows him well enough to know that this is generally only when provoked. And it would take a hell of a lot of provocation before he'd do something like this. So the logical conclusion is that Scott must have said _something_ , and considering the language he's employed so far, it was probably nothing good. Virgil knows better than to say so, but if Gordon was pushed so far as to smash a bottle of bourbon in retaliation, then there's a very really possibility that Scott got off lightly.

This probably isn't something Scott appreciates at the moment, given the way the tirade continues, "I cannot _believe_ him. I can't believe he's done this, the stupid little _moron_. This is going to ruin _everything_."

The last few shards of broken glass clatter in the dustpan, and Scott's attention stays fixed on the puddle of liquor on the floor as he starts to mop it up with the dish towel he's fetched from the kitchen. Virgil can already tell this isn't going to be sufficient to the task, and without being asked he makes his way to the back of the bar in search of more towels.

It's not the right thing to say, and so Virgil doesn't say it, but honestly he can't believe it either. Despite what he sometimes seems to _want_ people to believe, Gordon isn't stupid. Far from it. And he's not irresponsible, either. If Virgil had to rank his brothers from the most to least conscientious, he'd have a hard time deciding whether John or Gordon got the top spot, and privately suspects that John would cheerfully concede the title to Gordon. Scott can be reckless and Alan can be overconfident, but Gordon is always thorough, always careful and well-prepared, and this just isn't the sort of thing Virgil would've ever expected of him. It doesn't track with his history, his level of experience. By this point in his life, he's slept with probably at least a couple hundred people, all of whom were less important to him than Penelope is, and there's never been _anything_ like this kind of consequence. It's not the sort of thing Gordon would've let happen.

But not everybody knows Gordon quite as well as Virgil does, and in deciding to tell _Scott_ about this, before telling anyone else, Gordon might just have done something even stupider than getting Penelope pregnant. It's a selfish thing to wonder, but Virgil can't help asking himself why his little brother wouldn't have come to him, first.

At least it means he can answer honestly, when Scott approaches the bar, ignoring the towels Virgil's stacked helpfully on the bar top as he demands, " _Tell me_ you didn't fucking know about this."

"I didn't know he could've gotten her _pregnant_ ," Virgil answers, with the spirit of the truth if not the letter of it, exactly. Kayo had had her suspicions. Virgil hadn't wanted to speculate. That might've been a mistake.

Scott's hands land atop the bar, accusing, interrogative. "What _did_ you know?"

He has to plot a careful, delicate course through the reality of what he'd known and when he'd known it. Despite everything—despite the falsehoods demanded by his own ersatz love life—Virgil doesn't actually _like_ lying to his brothers. He prefers to do most of his lying purely by omission, and to remain on the technical side of the truth. As long as no one asks, he doesn't have to answer. Scott's asking now. Virgil's answer is carefully structured, qualified, and designed to provide information Scott hasn't actually asked for, hoping to soften some of the judgment raining down on his little brother.

"I mean—I knew they'd gotten together. That night…it was late, after the party. Everyone else had gone home, you and John were talking at the other end of the bar. Kayo and Parker were playing cards, Alan was playing with Sherbert. Lady P took off somewhere. And me and Gordon had a drink—he was already kinda tipsy, I guess, and there was a hell of a lot of champagne going around—you know how Penelope's parties are. And he told me he wanted to go find her and talk to her and just…like, you know how he's always felt about her. Feels about her. He just, he said he was gonna get it all out in the open and see what came of it. I don't think he ever expected—"

Scott cuts him off, clearly uninterested in any kind of nuance. "How drunk would she have to be to sleep with _Gordon_ , though? D'you think…?"

This has gone in a different direction than Virgil intended, and he physically recoils from the suggestion, horrified by the implication on his little brother's behalf. "Scott— _Jesus_ —that's absolutely _not_ what happened. The pair of them didn't get sloppy drunk in a back hallway and have a halfway consensual hookup. It was later. _Way_ later, after everyone had gone to bed. They both would've been sobering up, when—"

"So you _did_ know about this?"

And abruptly Virgil flashes back to the wrong side of a closet door, and the way he'd had to go bolting out of Kayo's ( _his_ ) bed and out of sight, as they'd heard someone fumbling with the lock on the door of the shared bathroom. The closets in the guest rooms of Creighton-Ward Manor are not large, and this one in particular had been stuffed with fur coats, musty with age and disuse. Virgil hadn't quite managed to pull the door quite all the way shut, and had to keep a hand locked on the handle to keep it from swinging back open. He'd stayed frozen in between the mink and the muskrat, listening intently as his brother had talked to Kayo instead of him. And Kayo's fine—and she'd handled it pretty well, all things considered—but she hadn't been who Gordon was looking for.

Virgil shouldn't have let that happen.

He remembers going to bed, and idly wondering how things had gone for Gordon, before there'd been a soft knock on his door, and it hadn't been his little brother. Kayo's arrival had banished all thoughts of anyone else's love life from even the remotest consideration, because what goes on between him and Kayo has always been fundamentally selfish. He hadn't remembered about Gordon until Gordon had come stumbling into the bedroom, looking for someone to talk to. Immediately after he'd left, he must have wound up with Penelope.

Virgil hadn't been there for him, then. He's got to make up for it now.

And while he's more than willing to try and cover for his little brother, but he hadn't actually intended to throw himself directly into the line of fire. There's a triumphant gleam in Scott's eyes beneath the golden pendant light above the bar, and one of his hands becomes a fist and thuds on the poured concrete countertop. Virgil's not bound by any kind of obligation to tell the truth, not by any means—but he knows he's bad at lying, and he's being mercilessly boxed into an uncomfortable corner, where he has to talk fast without fully considering what he's saying. "No…not…not when it actually must've _happened_. I—I mean, he told me, after, about how it'd all worked out. He said it went better than he could've hoped it would, and that him and Penelope were gonna give the whole thing a proper shot—they were gonna get together in Paris for his birthday—but I didn't _know_ they'd slept together, he didn't ever tell me so. I wouldn't even have _guessed_ , because Gordon's not _like that_ about Penelope. I mean…I know how Gordon is. He sleeps around a bit, sure, and he always kinda has—but it's different with her. Scott, you know he's in love with her, right?"

Scott, apparently, doesn't consider this an excuse for anything, and just shakes his head, visibly disgusted by the claim. "You don't do _this_ to someone you _love_. _He's_ been an irresponsible, _selfish_ little fucking _idiot_ and now _she's_ paying the price. There's no way in the _world_ Penelope wants a kid right now. She's _always_ said that getting _involved_ with a member of our family would be a huge goddamn mistake, and _look_ —she was _right_."

Virgil really wishes he could've known about this before Scott had. Defending Gordon in Gordon's absence feels like a duty—if Scott's decided he's going to be an asshole about this whole thing, then Virgil's got to step up his game and have his little brother's back—but he's growing slowly certain that it's going to have a personal cost. "I think we all need to take a minute and process this," he says, attempting a rational approach. "Obviously this isn't…it isn't great. But—"

"Yeah, _no shit_! "

Thunder overhead echoes Scott's outburst, and it becomes abruptly obvious that he's been restraining his anger about this. Virgil still doesn't entirely understand just why Scott's taking this so badly—theirs is a life where natural disasters are a common obstacle and unexpected curve balls are more or less par for the course—but his anger seems disproportionate to the situation. Virgil's concerns are about how Gordon is holding up, how Penelope had taken the news, whether she knows what she wants to do in this situation—Scott seems to be taking this more personally. Not as a problem to be dealt with, but almost like a deliberate insult.

Virgil tries to keep his tone calm and measured and even, trying very hard not to sound like he's patronizing his older brother. "Well, we'll just—we'll deal with it, Scott. We'll find a way to make it all work, and—"

Scott's in no mood to be placated, and if anything, Virgil's attempt to talk him down just fans the flames. He pushes away from the bar, starts to pace the floor as he continues, and it's almost like he's talking to himself as he declares, "It _can't_ work. How the hell are we supposed to continue to have a working relationship with her? How the _fuck_ is that supposed to happen, when there's this kind of personal baggage involved? He should've known better than to try and be with her in the first place; _she_ never should've encouraged him. They _can't_ be together, it doesn't _work_! They can't sustain this— _IR_ can't sustain this! Our lives just aren't compatible with—"

"With _what_?" Virgil interrupts, surprising himself with the sudden heat in his voice, and Scott looks up at him sharply, freezing midstep and narrowing his eyes. "With any kind of relationship beyond the bounds of what _you_ think IR can _sustain_? Since when are you the arbiter of what we do with our lives? Jesus Christ, Scott, do you hear yourself?"

Virgil's broadly considered to be a moderating influence on the rest of his family. Usually he's the one to back his brothers down from anger. But something about Scott's attitude is pushing all the wrong buttons, and Virgil feels his hands clench into fists around the handles of his crutches, as he _glowers_ at his big brother. Unexpectedly, this actually shuts Scott up, and for a few moments he just stares across the bar at Virgil, apparently dumbfounded.

"You can't seriously be taking _Gordon's_ side?"

The incredulity is insulting, and Virgil feels his temper flare even hotter in response. It's a rare, unfamiliar feeling, and some seldom called upon aspect of his personality might even relish it; the conviction of knowing he's in the right and fully entitled to come out swinging, to his little brother's defense. "There aren't _sides_! And if there were, _you'd_ be on the wrong one! We spend day after day after day dealing with life-threatening fuck-ups and industrial strength accidents and _actual_ world-altering disasters—and you're flipping your shit about _this_?"

Scott stares at him, and then repeats the truth that dominates the conversation, as though it needs to be said again, "He got our London Agent fucking _pregnant_!"

"And it's not the end of the goddamn world!" Virgil thunders, matching and then exceeding his brother for sheer volume as his voice rises with an unexpected swell of emotion. On the job, the quality and omnipresence of their comms mostly prohibits the need for shouting. Apparently shouting is something reserved for their personal lives. "It's just something that _happened_! And it _sucks_ that it happened, obviously neither of them would've wanted this, _obviously_ it complicates things—but for fuck's _sake_ , Scott, get some _perspective_!"

The way Scott falls suddenly, dangerously silent is a warning—not of the sort of imminent violence of temper that had shattered a bottle of Dad's bourbon on the floor—but of the fact that he's retained control where Virgil's lost it. Virgil doesn't get angry often, and he's not used to the rush of adrenaline that goes along with righteous fury, not used to how easy it to get caught up and carried away. The worst of it is; he hasn't said anything that isn't true. Lying doesn't come naturally to Virgil, and he's the keeper of a great many of those carefully omitted truths. These are all clamouring at the back of his throat, hidden behind clenched teeth, and they start tripping and tumbling over each other as he really gets started.

"Since when is _IR_ supposed to be all that matters?" he demands, and he tells himself he's thinking of what his brother must have wanted, tempted by the apparently forbidden prospect of getting to be with Penelope. He can't do anything nearly so dangerous as admit that he's speaking for himself, as much as Gordon. "Our entire family orders their entire lives around other people! We eat and we sleep and we work and we fly and now one of us might actually want something else, something _more_ — Gordon _loves_ somebody, and somebody loves _Gordon_ —and _you_ think whatever comes of that is gonna ruin everything? Is there _any_ version of that statement that doesn't make you the bad guy? You think _Dad_ would've reacted like this?"

Scott just stares at him, steely and cold. "You don't know what Dad would've said."

"I know he wouldn't have said anything that got a bottle of bourbon thrown at him!" Virgil shakes his head, reminding himself of what he knows about Gordon, and taking a few brutal stabs in the dark at what Scott could've said. "Did you tell him anything like what you've told me? Did you say they can't be together, did you say this was his fault? Did you say something about _her_? Because if you had even the first idea of the way Gordon really feels about Penelope, you'd know you're lucky he didn't punch your teeth down the back of your damn throat!"

Whatever format Scott had expected this encounter to take, clearly he wasn't expecting an argument. Not with _Virgil_. This is an advantage that Virgil rarely exploits—none of his brothers are accustomed to arguing with him, and it puts them all on the backfoot when he decides to take a confrontational stance. And so Scott flounders momentarily and while Virgil likes to think it's because he's made some cogent, rational points—really, Scott's just not used to being shouted at.

Still, he rallies. Some of the fire fades out of him, replaced by cold, imperious disdain. He glares right back at Virgil, and the bulk of the bar between them serves as a barrier between them, and the sides they've chosen. There's still half a puddle of bourbon gleaming on the floor behind him, and a sopping wet dish towel clenched in his fist drips onto the hardwood floor.

"This is going to ruin _everything_ ," he repeats, stubborn and certain and still blackly, deeply angry. "This is gonna tear IR apart, just you watch. Just you _wait_."

Virgil scoffs. "If IR can survive us losing our father; if IR can survive a legitimate goddamn _supervillain_ with a _vendetta_ ; if IR can survive people trying to actually fucking _kill us_ —then it can survive the fact that our brother might just have the nerve to care about something _other_ than International _fucking_ Rescue! Which is more than _you've_ done since Dad died!"

This is the point where he should realize he's gone just a fraction too far.


	37. torrential

Space is silent.

Thunderbird 5 is not.

TB5 is actually _incredibly_ loud, a symphony of engines and thrusters, fans and pumps, computers and comms, all the myriad systems that keep the ship habitable and safely stationed in Low Earth Orbit. TB5 is also so-well engineered that this has all been taken thoroughly into account, and so the racket has been cleverly diminished and acoustically dampened into what amounts to no more than a gentle roar of constant, meaningless white noise.

And John can't actually sleep without it.

So while a storm rolls and rumbles over the island, John's rarely used bedroom is filled with the sounds of his Thunderbird—not recorded, but broadcast in real time to a suite of cleverly placed and carefully tuned speakers, from a few hundred miles above the surface of the Earth. It's quietly _loud_ in John's room, loud enough that what rouses him from his fifteenth hour of sleep is actually the slow fall of silence, as the sounds of his distant space station fade. If the villa, particularly the bedrooms, weren't so well soundproofed, he would hear the storm overhead. Or maybe the storm down below, as his brothers shout at each other.

But instead he wakes to a suspicious level of quiet, beneath a night sky muffled away behind oppressively dark cloud cover, illuminated only briefly by flashes and flickers of inaudible lightning, blurred through the rain that sheets down the skylight. Some psychological trick played from some deep recess in the memory center of his brain supplies the sound of the storm, though he can't really hear it, and for a few moments John just lies still, staring up at the skylight. TB5 is somewhere overhead and lying on his back, warm and drowsy and safe, he addresses his first question heavenward—

"What time is it?"

And because there's a wide-open audio channel between his bedroom and his Thunderbird, he gets an answer.

"It is 1:54AM, Tracy Island time. Good morning, John."

EOS can hear him, but not see him. John still smiles, yawning and stretching and rolling over to the other side of the bed, though he curls right back up in a nest of cool sheets and soft blankets, closing his eyes again. "I don't think I'm back on the clock 'til 0600h. Officially."

"You have had nearly sixteen hours of sleep, and while I am reluctant to disturb what you have assured me is necessary rest, there is a developing situation that urgently requires your particular attention."

"… _my_ attention?"

In some ways, EOS does John's job better than John does, and John would happily be the first in line to admit it.

It's not that he wants her to replace him. Far from it, the past few weeks on the ground have only reinforced how much he prefers his life aboard TB5, removed from the thick of the action and working with his partner behind the scenes. John's capable, of course, held to the same standard that his brothers are—but fieldwork isn't his forte, and for as often as he's been an extra pair of hands in Virgil's absence—mostly he's become an extension of his Thunderbird into the midst of an active situation. With EOS in his ear, he's become a relay point for TB5, and despite the fact that the intensity of the work is the reason that he's spent sixteen out of twenty-four hours on deep, restorative sleep—it's still been rewarding and satisfying. Sometimes, as far removed as he is from the hands-on reality of International Rescue—sometimes, John catches himself wondering why they do this. After three weeks in the field, he feels like he understands again.

And in his absence from TB5, EOS has risen brilliantly, beautifully, _perfectly_ to the occasion, almost like it's what she was _made_ for. Knowing what he knows about the way she grew and evolved and became wholly and entirely her own, this _isn't_ actually something John considers to be the case—but he has to admit, in the years since she'd first become part of his life, EOS has come to fit into TB5 and into his life like something he hadn't known was missing. She's his partner and his friend and it might just be she's something even more than that—but for now, she's just covering for him, back aboard his station.

And he's prouder of her than he thinks he'll ever be able to say, for repaying his faith in her when first their paths had crossed.

"What could the world possibly throw at you that you couldn't handle?"

There's a soft, digitized little chuckle from the omnipresent speakers hidden around his bedroom. "It's what the world is about to throw at _you_ , John Tracy."

Whatever else has changed, EOS still hasn't _quite_ lost an occasional, slightly sinister flair for the dramatic.

John's just lucky he's known her long enough not to be spooked by it. _Concerned_ , maybe, a little—but not quite spooked.

Still, he sits up in bed, rubs at his eyes and pushes a hand through his hair, and plays along with the little pantomime. She's always going to be fond of games, and it took him entirely too long to learn that she treats _him_ like one. Thankfully the rules aren't complicated. "Oh?" he prompts.

"In approximately fourteen seconds, there will be a knock on your door. And shortly thereafter you will be told something which _I_ wanted to tell you, approximately three weeks ago, and I am obligated to remind you of the fact that _you turned me down_. That is all I have to say on the subject at present. I will talk to you later, John."

And the line goes dead, leaving John sitting up in bed in the relative silence of his bedroom, faintly bewildered by the cryptic format of her—warning? There'd been a slightly smug note in the synthesized tones of her voice, which generally means that she knows something he doesn't.

Which, to be fair, is something like her natural state.

Because before he's even had enough time to dig through his memory and dredge up just what exactly happened three weeks ago, there's a soft, almost tentative knock on his door. He wouldn't have heard it over the sounds of TB5, would've slept right through it. Now he's sitting up and awake, when the door swings open and his little brother appears on the threshold, looking absolutely _terrible_.

John is nearly three years older than Gordon, and ever since he can remember, the most constant and consistent feature of their relationship is that, when Gordon gets in trouble, he bolts _immediately_ for John's room.

Not for advice—or at least not usually. And not for solace or succor or comfort or anything so affectionate or brotherly, so much as just the certainty that underneath John's bed was the absolutely the _last_ place anyone would _ever_ look for him. And at one point in time that may have been true, until the unfathomable became the unlikely and the unlikely became the probable and the probable became the certain. When Gordon's in trouble, even decades later and far from the home they'd grown up in together, John's room is still his hiding place of choice.

And Gordon still retreats here in John's absence, though he can't quite fit under the bed any longer (platform, low to the ground, king-sized), he's just as liable to flop on top of its neatly made and pristine surface. John's room is _immaculate_ , compared to Gordon's own little den, with its unmade bed and tousled linen sheets, Celery KRUNCH! wrappers littering the vicinity of the wastebasket, while dumbbells pilfered from the gym lie in wait beneath strata of aging laundry for the unwary to stub their toes upon. Given the frequency of his absence from the island, John's room is almost John's room in name only, and it's always an oasis of calm and silence in the midst of their family's usual chaos. Unlike his own room, Gordon has the base decency to leave John's space in a better state than he found it, smoothing out the bedspread after he's spent whatever time he needs to with his face planted in the middle of the mattress, raging or weeping or daydreaming, getting whatever he needs to out of his system. It's not always trouble in the traditional sense that lands Gordon in John's room, these days.

But—crucially—John's not usually _in_ his room. And he's not usually sitting up in bed, right on the edge of expecting _something_ , thanks to a warning from his partner. He hadn't been expecting Gordon, but neither is he surprised to see him.

And maybe it's just force of habit that's brought him here now, because he catches himself on the threshold instead of stumbling inside, and seems confused and almost a little distressed that John might have the _temerity_ to do something as ludicrous as sleep in his own damn bed.

"…oh," is all he says, and his voice is thick and a little bit choked with something that might be emotion, or might be the miasma of liquor that wafts into the room with the swing of the door. This is, actually, a more likely explanation for why Gordon looks glassy-eyed and unsteady and shaken. It takes a hell of a lot before Gordon gets visibly shaken. It doesn't take much to get him stumbling drunk.

"Next door down," John advises helpfully, automatically—before remembering that he'd been warned about this occurrence, down to the _second_ , and that something must need his attention. He's quick enough that his recovery manages not to be awkward, as he pats the edge of the bed and says, "But get in here. What's up?"

Gordon's about as subtle as a boot to the kidneys, and he's plainly, pathetically grateful not to have been turned away, by the way he slips into the room. Immediately he shuts and locks the door behind him, leaning his weight against it and sliding downward to crumple on the floor with his head between his knees, instead of accepting the invitation to cross the room and sit on the bed. John can't tell if it's because he's been less hospitable than he thinks, or if Gordon's drunker than he looks.

And smells.

"You _reek_ of bourbon," John informs his little brother, and with the awareness that he and the rest of the family are all due to be back on the clock in only a few more hours, this doesn't bode well. If it's trouble that's brought Gordon up here, just like the old days, John suspects that it's got something to do with with their father's booze and their big brother's temper. "What happened?"

"Broke something," is the only answer he gets, and though Gordon mumbles his answer and doesn't look up from staring at the floor, John's listening more closely to the way the words sound than what's actually being said, and so he hears the slight slur staring to mar the less important syllables of Gordon's answer. His head jerks up suddenly and the back of his skull knocks against the door, and when he fixes John with a bright-eyed stare, it's beyond a doubt that he's drunk. And with Gordon it doesn't take much and it doesn't take long, but it _does_ take a pretty significant reason. "Wanna…hear 'bout another stupid thing I did?"

John pushes the covers back and shifts cautiously to the edge of the mattress. He keeps his room cool, and he shivers slightly, pulling down the sleeves of the soft grey Henley he'd worn to bed, bunched up around his elbows from where he'd had his arms cinched around his pillow. His pajama pants are a charcoal Glen plaid, and a long ago Christmas gift from Penelope, who blips subtly back onto his radar as a reason why Gordon might be so bent out of shape. John summons up some tact and is appropriately gentle and cautious as he asks, "What'd you do?"

A big, shuddery deep breath precedes the answer. "I got Penny pregnant."

The news lands in the middle of the space between the bed and the door, dropping so solidly into the silence of John's bedroom that it _bounces_ off the hardwood a few times, before John understands the significance of what was just said.

Penelope's _pregnant_.

 _Gordon_ got Penelope pregnant.

 _This_ is what EOS wanted to warn him about.

EOS knew this _three weeks ago_.

" _Fuck_ ," John says, startled for so many more reasons than the obvious.

And across the room Gordon fails to stifle a sob, wraps his arms around his knees and buries his face between them.

The question of what EOS knew and how and when she knew it becomes abruptly secondary to the issue more immediately at hand.

The last time John can remember really, properly crying he was stood at a graveside beneath a willow tree in Kansas, watching his father's empty casket descend into the ground next to the place they'd laid their mother to rest. That was over three years ago now, and in the time that's passed since they've lost their father, it would be a lie to say that he's shed no tears since then, but these are rare and usually fairly restrained. John's definitely at the opposite end of the spectrum from Gordon, who's always been a bit of a crier. John's pretty sure he's seen tears dashed dramatically away because Grandma came home with smooth peanut butter instead of crunchy.

Obviously this is different, and John immediately gets out of bed and crosses the room to sit on the floor next to his little brother, and to put a comforting hand on his shoulder. Up close, the smell of alcohol is even stronger, but with his head still bowed and his face still hidden, the scent of it isn't on Gordon's breath so much as his clothes. It's dim and dark in John's room, but his eyes have mostly adjusted, and he can see a pattern of splattered droplets on the bright red canvas of Gordon's hightops, the turned up cuffs of his jeans. He's not about to interrogate his brother about what got broken, but it's not a broad leap to guess that it might've been a bottle of liquor. John wonders how much of it is _in_ his brother as opposed to _on_ his brother, as he sits and patiently waits for soft sobs to diminish into softer sniffles and then fade into a heavy sigh.

"What happened?" John questions, appropriately gentle and patient as Gordon finally picks his head up from his knees and presses his palms against his eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. He does this a couple more times, and John knows enough to recognize it as Gordon, undertaking a very deliberate exercise to calm himself down.

"Penelope's _pregnant_ ," his little brother repeats, as though this hasn't already been made perfectly clear, though John lets the repetition pass unremarked upon.

If John's good at anything (and he's good at plenty), he's especially good at carefully triaging information about developing situations out of emotionally compromised people. He has "who" and "what" on lockdown: "Penelope" and "Pregnant". The Where, When, How and Why are sure to follow, as he prompts, "She told you today?"

Gordon swallows and shakes his head, as he clarifies, "We only found out today. Penny—I went to meet her in Auckland, and when we got together, sh-she…she wasn't herself. I could _tell_ something was wrong, and I knew I should've said something, but then before anything else even happened, she just blacked out _completely_. Scared the _shit_ outta me. I made her go to the hospital, they did blood work. And the doctor came back and told us she's _pregnant_ ; she's like _eight weeks pregnant_."

John winces at the uncharacteristic note of panic in Gordon's voice, as he repeats himself again, trying to corral his little brother back from the precipitous edge of a proper breakdown about the whole situation. "Is she all right?" he asks and then immediately rephrases the question, "I mean, that's a hell of a shock, obviously, I imagine it's a lot for her to process—but was there anything else…uh…wrong?"

Whether he realizes it or not, talking his way through the details is helping him calm down, though Gordon nods miserably as he answers the question, "Anemia. Chronic, apparently, except I never knew that. But then, why the fuck _would_ I know that, when we've only even been together since just January? She's _supposed_ to be on iron supplements, she stopped taking 'em, not that I knew _that_ either. And then with all the travel, and running around Fischler's HQ, and then _barely_ eating all day, and on top of all that, she's _pregnant_ — _Christ_ , John, she _scared me_."

Gordon has a tendency to babble a bit when he's really upset, and he gets no less loquacious when he's drunk. John is habitually taciturn, but he's good at listening between the lines of what people babble about when they're panicking, and gently guiding them towards more relevant information. "Yeah, I'll bet. How'd she take the news?"

There's a solid thud as Gordon tips his head back, knocking the back of his skull against the door. "Bad, I guess. I've never seen her cry like that. I've never even seen her cry _at all_. Oh… _god_ , Pen…"

"Penelope's pretty tough," John tells his brother, quick to reassure him about what her ladyship can withstand. This is, admittedly, a different sort of challenge than what Penelope usually squares up against, but he still has every confidence in her capacity to endure it. John's honestly less concerned about Penelope than he is about Gordon, which leads to his next question— "Are _you_ okay?"

That gets a short, wounded little bark of out-of-place laughter, and a shake of Gordon's head. "No. I can't…I can't _believe_ I let this happen, I am _such_ a fucking _idiot_. And Scott— _Scott_ says I ruined her _life_."

This late-night scene between John and his little brother is a rare one, and unusually intimate for either of them, with respect to each other. John and Gordon aren't what you could call close. Gordon's close to Virgil and John's close to Alan, but Gordon and John aren't close to each other. In the moment that Gordon mentions their older brother's name, it's like the moment they're currently sharing is frozen, suddenly, and etched into glass. This shatters into a million tiny pieces in the space of the moment it takes John to realize that he isn't the first person Gordon's told about this. Gordon's talked to Scott.

The words _Damage Control_ blare into his brain, complete with red flashing lights and a screaming klaxon. What could've possibly possessed Gordon to go to _Scott_ with this kind of news—as far as John's aware, Scott didn't even know Penelope and Gordon were _dating_ , let alone that there was a possibility that they could get pregnant together. This is the sort of thing that should've gone to _Virgil_ , and Virgil would've had the sense to pull John into the loop, and then John's advice would've been to go _directly_ to Grandma, as a means of distributing the impact of such an enormous piece of news. Instead, Gordon's told _Scott_.

And John can just imagine how well _that_ must have gone.

So. Damage control.

"You haven't ruined anyone's life," he corrects firmly, immediate and insistent and certain. "Not hers and not yours, either. Something unexpected happened between two consenting adults who love each other—" —though at that John catches himself and pauses suddenly, because this isn't really his area, and he isn't entirely sure he's read the scenario correctly— "…I mean—you _do_ , right? Love each other?"

Gordon nods and sniffles again, wiping his nose on his sleeve and coughing. Crying is messy, not that messiness bothers Gordon nearly as much as it bothers John. It seems like the same could be said of falling in love with someone. John's privately thankful that he'll never have to know about that. "Yeah," Gordon answers, quiet now, and properly subdued. "We do. Or…I mean, _I_ do, anyway. For sure. And she says she does, and I wanna believe her."

John nods, satisfied. "Then this is nothing like what happened with Scott."

The context is so deeply ingrained and intrinsic to John's perception of their eldest brother, and the connection is so blatantly obvious that it takes a couple awkward moments of silence and a blank, bewildered stare from Gordon before John remembers that he's one of very few people alive in the world today who actually knows " _what happened with Scott_ ". Gordon certainly doesn't.

Not yet, anyway.

"What happened with Scott?"

"I shouldn't have said that," John says quickly, as though the fact that it was a mistake—a rare slip of the tongue—will somehow grant him an exemption from the sudden laser focus of his brother's attention, as Gordon presses the point. "Uh, never mind."

"No, what? Tell me. What d'you mean?"

"I _shouldn't_ tell you," John hedges, stating the ethical reality out loud and for the record (and for the benefit a certain specific somebody who is almost certainly listening in), with the complete and total awareness that he's going to do so anyway.

There's an audible shudder in the deep breath Gordon draws through his teeth, and the steadiness in his voice is obviously manufactured and deliberate as he says, "Johnny, Scott _basically_ told me that if it's gonna be _my_ kid, then the best thing Penny could do is get rid of it. He told me I ruined her life, that me and her shouldn't be together, and that she couldn't possibly want this with me. So if _you_ know something that explains why our big brother suddenly fucking _hates me_ , I think you'd probably better tell me what the fuck it is, because I think I'm the closest I've ever been to hating him right back."

John winces at the dark, serious edge to his little brother's voice. "…I didn't say I wasn't _going_ to tell you, but Gordon—" John trails off and hesitates again, because his little brother is objectively rather drunk and obviously emotionally compromised, and this is a secret that John's kept for over a decade now. Information management is John's job. What people know and when and why and how much of it they need (or don't need) to know. This is relevant information, and despite his current state, John's pretty sure that Gordon deserves to know. He might even _need_ to know, it's just that John _really_ shouldn't be the one to tell him. And the distinction represents one of those sticky, morally gray choices that John doesn't like making.

But there's nothing for it now.

"—Okay. Gordon, I'm only telling you this because I think the context will help take some of the edge off whatever Scott said. I imagine there was a lot and he probably _massively_ overreacted. I promise, Scott doesn't hate you. But he _definitely_ hated _himself_ , back when this happened with him."


	38. lightning

AC-Tracy: hey you awake?

BBBrrngr: only cuz it's u askin, bro

AC-Tracy: im crushing at skullzone rn but the guy i was co-op with had to go, want in

AC-Tracy:: hurry or im gonna lose my groove

BBBrrngr: oh ya

BBBrrngr: lemme get outta bed

AC-Tracy: kk thx

BBBrrngr: just loading in

teddyunbearable: whyd he quit though

n1ghtlightning33: sometimes people gotta sleep

n1ghtlightning33: i guess ;)

teddyunbearable: shut up your on the ass side of the planet

teddyunbearable: i'm on the NORMAL side

teddyunbearable: the side with the good bits

teddyunbearable: for real tho he was playin with a guy in the top five on the skzn leaderboard and he bailed on u?

teddyunbearable: is he dumb

n1ghtlightning33: he probably didn't know

n1ghtlightning33: haha not everybody cares about the leaderboard

teddyunbearable: you do

n1ghtlightning33: not really

teddyunbearable: sometimes you really really do

teddyunbearable: i got my tank is that good or should i dualclass

n1ghtlightning33: yeah thats fine i'm running a hybrid set up anyway i'll cover everything else

n1ghtlightning33: keep up, stay alive, etc

n1ghtlightning33: u know the drill'

teddyunbearable: watch my ranking go up by like five bajillion points just by following u through a blacktier map on uber xtreme

n1ghtlightning33: :)

teddyunbearable: i don't know why you slum it in public coop

n1ghtlightning33: gettin the lowbs some good ranks :)

n1ghtlightning33: it's like charity

teddyunbearable: no it's like u like showing off

teddyunbearable: you're on the LEADERBOARD

n1ghtlightning33: hahaha the oceanic leaderboard

n1ghtlightning33: i wouldn't even be top 20 on the NA servers

teddyunbearable: oh nah man u still could be

teddyunbearable: maybe not top5 but def top 10

teddyunbearable: u got all the guys in like

teddyunbearable: korea and japan who are on the same servers as u

teddyunbearable: there is some SICK gaming in seoul did u ever go to a tournamet there

n1ghtlightning33: nah i remote play everything

teddyunbearable: those guys are hardcore

teddyunbearable: i went one time for work

teddyunbearable: there is like tons of money in it and sponsors and everything its like the olympics

n1ghtlightning33: i've been to the olympics

n1ghtlightning33: :P

teddyunbearable: pfffff yeah when u were liek

teddyunbearable: how old is ur brother

n1ghtlightning33: which one

teddyunbearable: the olympic one

n1ghtlightning33: oh him

n1ghtlightning33: he's 25

teddyunbearable: how old was he at the olympics

n1ghtlightning33: 17

teddyunbearable: fuck off he was not

n1ghtlightning33: yeah he was

teddyunbearable: he was younger than u at the olympics

n1ghtlightning33: no he was older than me at the olympics, i was 12 (:

teddyunbearable: older than u now though

teddyunbearable: younger

teddyunbearable: u know what i mean

n1ghtlightning33: yeah he was younger than I am now. olympians are pretty young usually though, it's not that weird.

teddyunbearable: only two years younger i guess

n1ghtlightning33: more like 3, i'm twenty this week

teddyunbearable: o shit right!

n1ghtlightning33: hahaha

teddyunbearable: you told me even

teddyunbearable: i knew that

n1ghtlightning33: i know you did

teddyunbearable: whatcha gonna do

n1ghtlightning33: work, probably

teddyunbearable: aw no

teddyunbearable: don't work

n1ghtlightning33: i like working though

teddyunbearable: workin lots lately this is like the first time ive seen you on skzn in like a couple weeks

n1ghtlightning33: yeah, well, gotta cover for V

teddyunbearable: hows his leg

n1ghtlightning33: he says itchy

teddyunbearable: hahahaha he got off easy tho. just a broken leg. when the bossman fucked all his shit last year he musta been crazy itchy

n1ghtlightning33: hahaha well

n1ghtlightning33: the itching prob wasn't the worst part

n1ghtlightning33: is he walking again yet?

teddyunbearable: nah still got the chair

n1ghtlightning33: that sucks :/

teddyunbearable: i don't think he cares he likes the atention

n1ghtlightning33: we probably couldn't keep virg in a wheelchair even if he needed one

n1ghtlightning33: he's on crutches and he's still bombing from one end of the house to the other

n1ghtlightning33: he got down in the hangar the other day and brains chased him out cuz of how he's a safety hazard

n1ghtlightning33: I think v didn't like that very much

teddyunbearable: i guess your job is pretty cool

n1ghtlightning33: it's aright

teddyunbearable: u have a rocketship

teddyunbearable: "its arite" fuck u

n1ghtlightning33: hahaha it's not MY rocketship though really

n1ghtlightning33: it's like the family rocketship

n1ghtlightning33: i'm not the only one who can fly it

teddyunbearable: best at it though

n1ghtlightning33: yeah

n1ghtlightning33: i mean, i can fly the other ones too though

n1ghtlightning33: the only one i can't do is four. and shadow I guess.

teddyunbearable: which ones four

n1ghtlightning33: the sub

teddyunbearable: o right

n1ghtlightning33: it's weird that you don't know which one is TB4

teddyunbearable: why

n1ghtlightning33: i don't know maybe it isn't

n1ghtlightning33: it just seems obvious to me like

n1ghtlightning33: sometimes my brothers seem like their numbers more than like people you know?

teddyunbearable: ummmm

n1ghtlightning33: maybe that's just all the work lately tho I don't know

n1ghtlightning33: i like it and it's good for me but I think it's kinda rough on my brothers

n1ghtlightning33: gordies getting his ass kicked I think because he's running 2 AND 4 AND he doesn't have any proper backup

teddyunbearable: which one is gordie

n1ghtlightning33: 4.

teddyunbearable: he's a submarine?

n1ghtlightning33: the olympics one

teddyunbearable: oh right right

teddyunbearable: did i meet him

n1ghtlightning33: nah, u met scott and virg and kayo

teddyunbearable: kayos hot

n1ghtlightning33: dude

teddyunbearable: :B

teddyunbearable: she's not ur sister though

n1ghtlightning33: she basically is

teddyunbearable: not like by blood though

n1ghtlightning33: don't go there bro she's way too old for you anyway

teddyunbearable: okay i won't date your sister

n1ghtlightning33: it's hilarious that you think you'd have a chance

teddyunbearable: aw :(

teddyunbearable: i'm cute

n1ghtlightning33: yeah but you're SUPER annoying

teddyunbearable: it's my JOB

n1ghtlightning33: being cute or being annoying

n1ghtlightning33: couldn't PAY me to be THAT annoying

teddyunbearable: you don't need anyone to pay u, ur family is richer than god

teddyunbearable: i looked it up one time

teddyunbearable: or I mean like I asked the boss

teddyunbearable: do u know how much money your family has

n1ghtlightning33: enough for me to have my own rocketship

teddyunbearable: xactly

teddyunbearable: also

teddyunbearable: if i wasn't annoying we wouldn't ever have met

n1ghtlightning33: you met my brothers

teddyunbearable: yeah but you weren't there

teddyunbearable: i only met you because of that esports thing i did

teddyunbearable: for the Murderbrawl 3 tournament in LA

n1ghtlightning33: ohhh that's what you mean

teddyunbearable: it's like my favorite game except for how i suck

teddyunbearable: if you like it but you're not good at it then u gotta be good at shouting about it

teddyunbearable: and then the boss got a press badge as a gift from some business deal or whatever and obvs he doesn't know anything about it so i had to do it

n1ghtlightning33: and you're pretty good at shouting

teddyunbearable: i'm like SO good at shouting

teddyunbearable: and people like me

teddyunbearable: but no your match against xxXst3r1aXxx was like

teddyunbearable: INSANE

n1ghtlightning33: I lost

teddyunbearable: after three HOURS and u weren't even at the actual evnet?

teddyunbearable: like u didn't even have an avatar or anything u were just this blankslate mystery player who was playin from somewhere on the other side of the world and who managed to rank into the first bracket

n1ghtlightning33: TI only let me play if i stayed annonymous

n1ghtlightning33: security stuff

teddyunbearable: right right but like

teddyunbearable: oh man i was so sure u were gonna win and it was gonna be this badass underdog story and i was so hype

n1ghtlightning33: lol and then i lost in the first bracket'

teddyunbearable: yeah but you SHOULD HAVE won

teddyunbearable: and i only messaged u because i used my expense card to bribe of the organizers to ell me ur contact info because i had to tell you how badass u were

n1ghtlightning33: and then i was like 'crashed any more leisure zeppelins lately'

teddyunbearable: hahahaha yeah

teddyunbearable: but also u were cool though

n1ghtlightning33: yeah well

n1ghtlightning33: if you hadn't met my brothers first we wouldn't ever have met

n1ghtlightning33: because I wouldn't have taken a message from just some random person from mb3con

n1ghtlightning33: john would give me so much hell

teddyunbearable: johns the oldest

n1ghtlightning33: second oldest. space station. very paranoid.

teddyunbearable: right. i was close.

n1ghtlightning33: scott's the oldest.

teddyunbearable: he thinks i'm a dumbass

n1ghtlightning33: to be fair you ARE a bit of a dumbass, you super could've crashed into a mountain and died horribly on a stupid livestream infront of your millions of viewers or whatever

teddyunbearable: aw

n1ghtlightning33: BUT he did dumb shit when he was our age too. and he was madder that your boss made you do it than he was that you did it in the first place.

teddyunbearable: the boss didn't MAKE me do it

n1ghtlightning33: yeah, well, maybe then don't tell Scott that

teddyunbearable: lol

teddyunbearable: none of em know you even talk to me tho

n1ghtlightning33: nah, guess not

n1ghtlightning33: well. john might. like i said, kinda paranoid. phd in computer sciences since he was 23. semi-legal AI construct for a sidekick.

n1ghtlightning33: gets his grubby lil mitts all over the island's computer systems

n1ghtlightning33: YOU HEAR THAT JOHN

n1ghtlightning33: I'M SAYING YOU'RE A CREEPER

teddyunbearable: omfg he's not really reading this shit is he

n1ghtlightning33: lol no

n1ghtlightning33: john has not hacked into the skullzone co-op chat servers so he can spy on me chatting with my friends

teddyunbearable: lol friend(s)

n1ghtlightning33: shut up :P

n1ghtlightning33: I mean, i'll be honest, he absolutely COULD if he wanted to

n1ghtlightning33: and I'll be extra honest, i wouldn't be surprised if he's got like

n1ghtlightning33: some kinda benign, low level custom spyware floating around in island systems that logs keystrokes at the point of input and tracks specific words/phrases in case theres anything that might be a security risk

teddyunbearable: i understood like half of that

n1ghtlightning33: but i don't think he'd be interested enough to read our skullzone chat logs

n1ghtlightning33: also for real he doesn't have the time

teddyunbearable: i guess that's good

n1ghtlightning33: he takes Big Brother a little too literarily sometimes

teddyunbearable: lol its "literally"

n1ghtlightning33: right, sure.

n1ghtlightning33: sometimes i have to kind of not think too hard about the kind of stuff john could do if he really wanted to

teddyunbearable: like what?

n1ghtlightning33: i don't really wanna talk about it. keeps me up at night.

teddyunbearable: damn bro

n1ghtlightning33: nah, it's okay. then i just think about the fact that he has a little marimo moss ball in an aquarium on his desk in his bedroom and he's kept it alive since he was like fourteen and our dad brought it back from tokyo for him.

n1ghtlightning33: someone who was gonna go all chaotic rogue with his ultrapowerful spacestation wouldn't hassle me every three days to make sure his marimo still has enough water

teddyunbearable: lol. nerd.

n1ghtlightning33: biggest nerd I know.

teddyunbearable: how old is he

n1ghtlightning33: the moss ball turns 13 this year.

teddyunbearable: no dummy your BROTHER

n1ghtlightning33: 27. 28 in october. before you ask, virg is 26. scotty's gonna turn 31. kayo is still too old for you.

teddyunbearable: dude you have like a billion brothers

n1ghtlightning33: four is a lot like a billion, yeah

teddyunbearable: well when they all have have phds and submarines and badass rocket planes and maybe evil space stations and olympic gold medals and w/e

teddyunbearable: some of them seem like they should count at least a couple times extra

teddyunbearable: i have a godfather who bought me like a quarter million vlog viewers and told me to go nuts

n1ghtlightning33: yeah, but like. only the first quarter million :) the other 2.5 are all you! and a lot of them are bots. but the 1.5 million that aren't bots are totally all you!

teddyunbearable: pfff sure

teddyunbearable: just saying

teddyunbearable: godfathers are kinda shitty fathers

n1ghtlightning33: gotta love the dead parents club

n1ghtlightning33: and big brothers aren't always that great at it either

n1ghtlightning33: whether it's four of em or four billion of em

teddyunbearable: yeah, i guess

n1ghtlightning33: we do okay, though, i think :)

n1ghtlightning33: you're good at doing your thing, it doesn't matter how you started. people like you.

n1ghtlightning33: and i'm in the top 5 of the oceanic leaderboard for skullzone! :)

teddyunbearable: lol i knew u cared

n1ghtlightning33: I care a little

teddyunbearable: we should go to seuol for your birthday

teddyunbearable: or tokyo

teddyunbearable: you can get ur brothers mossball a little brother mossball!

n1ghtlightning33: lmao

n1ghtlightning33: i bet he would actually really love that

n1ghtlightning33: wish i'd thought of it

teddyunbearable: no charge ;)

teddyunbearable: cmon we gotta go tho! itll be so fun al, come on. plz.

n1ghtlightning33: maybe :)

teddyunbearable: u got a day off today

n1ghtlightning33: i only got a day off because I think if gordon hadn't gotten a day off then he wouldve gone to lie on the bottom of the pool to scream all the air out of his lungs instead of getting a mandatory eight hours of racktime before he could fly again

teddyunbearable: wtf

n1ghtlightning33: we fly a lot

teddyunbearable: is he okay

n1ghtlightning33: oh yeah, gordon's super tough

n1ghtlightning33: still needs a break sometimes though

teddyunbearable: u can get a break

teddyunbearable: on ur birthday

teddyunbearable: and we'll go TEAR

teddyunbearable: IT

teddyunbearable: UP!

n1ghtlightning33: scott will kill me if i tear up anything important

teddyunbearable: don't tell him (:

n1ghtlightning33: kayo won't let me go to a big city on my own because i could get kidnapped

teddyunbearable: she can come (:

n1ghtlightning33: maaaaaaybe

teddyunbearable: im gonna be real annoying til u do what i want

n1ghtlightning33: sounds like a tuesday

teddyunbearable: i came and played skullzone iwth u

n1ghtlightning33: i got you legit like 15 ranks just now

n1ghtlightning33: you aren't even shooting you've been trying to clip under the map the whole match

teddyunbearable: hahaa its cool under there

teddyunbearable: it's also cool

teddyunbearable: in tokyo

teddyunbearable: OR SEUOL

teddyunbearable: u can pick cuz it's ur b-day

teddyunbearable: im nice like that

n1ghtlightning33: so nice

teddyunbearable: i'm great

n1ghtlightning33: I'll ask tomorrow, okay?

teddyunbearable: whos tomorrow

n1ghtlightning33: mine, i guess

n1ghtlightning33: whenever I see scott really

teddyunbearable: don't say its to go with me cuz scott doesn't like me

n1ghtlightning33: scott likes you fine and it doesn't matter anyway even if he didn't

n1ghtlightning33: you're my friend

teddyunbearable: lol i have

teddyunbearable: 2483612 viewers

teddyunbearable: + 1 friend

n1ghtlightning33: :)

teddyunbearable: :D

n1ghtlightning33: let's go another round, buddy

teddyunbearable: okay pal :)


	39. deluge

The storm outside has swallowed the island whole by now, the cell moving over their tiny part of the South Pacific. The sparse, narrow strips of sand that make up the craggy shores of their home will be worn thinner still by the crashing of waves, will need to be restored slowly after the storm has passed, by the gentle regularity of the tides. Palm trees bend and whip in the wind, and fronds will be scattered over the whole of the island by the time the storm has blown itself out. There's going to be a lot of cleaning up to do. The lightning and associated thunder have started to die down, but the precipitation has picked up, and it feels like they're going to be rained into the ocean at this rate.

And it's still dark, and seems darker still, without the lightning. It seems like an unearthly silence has fallen, without the muffled sound of thunder. The only light in the room is from a single golden pendant lamp, hanging above the bar, and it doesn't seem to go far at all against what tonight has become. Standing beneath a storm-dark sky, Scott faces off against one of his brothers, who's risen to the defense of something indefensible—

He feels the heat of his pulse throbbing in his ears, his back teeth locked so tightly together that he'd be liable to crack a filling, if he had any. Good teeth are mostly genetic, and are just another example of something Scott's inherited from their father. Like a slight widows peak, greying temples, a preference for a particular brand of bourbon, and International _fucking_ Rescue.

 _More than you've done since Dad died._

As though Gordon getting Penelope pregnant is some shining example of personal growth beyond the bounds of IR, rather than something that's going to _completely_ undermine the stability of their entire working relationship with her, if not the stability of IR as a whole. As though their little brother's apparent inability to keep his professional life separate from his personal life is something to aspire to, rather than the absolute peak of irresponsibility. As though Virgil has the first fucking idea how their father would've handled this news, when Scott knows from personal experience just _exactly_ how that encounter would've gone.

Though, if he's honest with himself, the way that encounter had gone for Scott had been very, very different from the way it's going for Gordon. Scott's not especially interested in being honest with himself at the moment.

Virgil at least seems to realize that he might have overstepped a boundary by bringing their father into this and he backs down immediately. It's hard to take him seriously these days, hobbled and hindered as he is by his broken leg and his crutches and his three weeks of general uselessness. He deflates visibly beneath the furious stare that Scott levels at him, daring him to continue, and then hobbles a half step back, maybe without quite meaning to.

"—that's…not what I meant," he stammers, awkwardly now, literally on the backfoot and dropping his gaze to the floor. "Shit, Scott. I just—"

"You just _what_?" Scott snarls. "You think I care more about IR than about our family?"

"That's _not_ what I said—"

There's still a sopping wet towel in Scott's hand, dripping bourbon back onto the floor, and in a fit of pique he throws it into the undermounted sink at the end of the bar, where it lands with a wet, unpleasant thud. This action closes the distance between them, and effectively traps Virgil in between the counter and the shelves behind it. "What I've had to care about since Dad died," he starts, keeping his voice low and deceptively calm, now that he's near enough to make shouting pointless, "is what it takes to hold our family together. We _lost_ Dad, all we had _left_ was each other, and IR was all he left _us_. And if _Gordon_ wants to disrespect that legacy—" Scott hasn't actually thought as far ahead as what he'll need to threaten his little brother with, if this doesn't all come out right, "—then he doesn't deserve any further part in it. IR doesn't _need_ him."

Scott doesn't actually mean this and absolutely should not have said it, because Virgil blanches and takes him at his word, plainly horrified, "Don't say that," he protests, almost pleading. "Scott, if you're not careful about the way you handle him right now, then I _promise_ ; he won't choose _this_. I don't even know if he'd choose _us_ , if it came down to the question of our family or Penelope."

"Then the _hell_ with him!" Scott explodes, and his fist slams down on the bartop, hard enough to hurt the side of his hand. " _Fuck_ him! What the hell use is he anyway, if he could let something like _this_ happen, if he could do something like this to her?"

It's possibly the fact that Scott has him cornered behind the bar, but Virgil's starting to grow visibly agitated, upset in a way he hasn't been yet and just isn't, usually. "Scott, _please_ , calm the hell down. Don't say anything like that, we just…we just need—"

"Nothing is going to _fix this_ ," Scott snaps, interrupting, because Virgil doesn't understand. "It's too late now, d'you get that? Do you not understand the _permanence_ of what he's done to her, the fact that it changes _everything_? They _can't_ have a relationship after this. Even _after_ she gets an abortion—"

Scott has no right to pretend at any kind of certainty about the choice Penelope will be faced with—and deep down, some part of him knows this. Even just by reading the blatant distress in Virgil's reactions, in the way he'd caused Gordon such obvious, enormous pain—Scott knows that reception of the news has been reprehensible, that his behaviour goes absolutely beyond the pale. But the knowledge seems distant, diminished compared to what came roaring up from the heart of him. The rage and the pain and the relentless futility he feels are all his own, from long, long ago—and whether he can help feeling this way or not, part of him knows that he shouldn't be reversing all those emotions, reflecting them back into the situation at hand. He's behaved horribly to Gordon, done damage to their relationship on a scale he doesn't yet have the context to comprehend. He has no right to talk about Penelope and the choice she has to make—but he can only consider it in the context of his own life, and his own limited, painful experience.

He's also scaring the hell out of Virgil, who interrupts sharply, before he can say anything further about the ultimate fate of Penelope's pregnancy, " _Stop_."

This might be mercy, though the pleading note of protest in his voice makes it hard to assign mercy to the action, unless it's Virgil asking for it. He's really and genuinely upset now, and it's _hard_ to upset Virgil. It takes deliberate, concentrated effort. " _Fuck_ , Scott, just—just _stop_ , don't say anything else. Please. _Please_ , stop. _I_ can't fucking take it, okay? I can't—I _can't_ hear this shit from you, I don't understand. It's our _brother_ …it's just, it's _Gordon_. And it's Penelope, and we've known Penelope for half a decade now, she's—she's practically family. And he _loves_ her, and she's gotta feel at least some kinda way about _him_ , or this wouldn't have happened in the first place. And it's not your place to talk about _either_ of them like this, so just—just _stop_ , Scott. _Please_."

To his credit, though nothing else he's said or done so far tonight has been worthy of him, Scott stops. He even backs off, gives Virgil the means to escape from behind the bar, as he turns away and stalks over to their father's desk, drops into the chair behind it. It's late. Pushing towards two in the morning, and though Scott isn't exactly tired, the flare of anger has worn him out. Like it's scorched the surface of his internal landscape, left everything blackened and brittle, the ashes and dust of anguish settling in a thick layer.

For the moment, probably wisely, Virgil keeps his distance, creeping out from behind the bar and not coming any closer. Scott ignores him, folding his arms and hunching over the desk. Anger was easy, readily available and immediate, but anger always hits Scott like a bolt of lightning, spent and gone in what feels like an instant, compared to the low rumble of remorse and regret that follows after it, as he starts to actually catch up to what he's said.

He's been harsh. Objectively, he's come down on his little brother like a ton of bricks, dropped from the staggering height of anger he'd reached as he'd processed the information. If anyone else in this family has a temper to match Scott's, it's Gordon. Virgil's probably right, Scott's lucky not to have been slugged in the face, especially since it wouldn't even have been the first time Gordon's taken a swing at him in the course of an argument, as emotions flare high. What Virgil hadn't mentioned was the probability of Scott, hitting Gordon right back, which would've been equally as likely and made everything an entire order of magnitude worse.

He's handled this badly, and sitting at his father's desk, he can only imagine the immensity of his father's disappointment, and somehow that's even worse than the reality would be. This is not how Jeff would've handled the situation, because the _last_ time Jeff handled this situation, Scott had caused it. The _first_ time Jeff had handled this situation, Scott had been the result. In both cases, Scott's father set a far better example than Scott's adhered to, in dealing with an unexpected pregnancy.

And he sighs and leans back in his father's chair, rubbing his eyes. Considering IR, from a purely practical perspective, he doesn't think they can resume operations with this hanging over the family. They'll need to extend their current state of standby, maybe indefinitely. After their father had died, it had been an entire month before they'd managed to get back into a semblance of working order, and even that was only because they'd desperately needed something to do. Scott doesn't know if this is comparable, but it's the last major crisis their family had needed to deal with. Everything since then has been minor, easily worked around, and they've always managed to keep the lights on and keep flying.

"Scott?"

Sooner than Scott expects, Virgil tags back in, though his approach is cautious and he doesn't come closer than the far side of the desk, keeping another barrier in between them. He seems hesitant, maybe almost fearful, as he asks, "Is…is it because it's Gordon? Or because it's Penelope?"

Scott just shakes his head. He feels a deep disinclination to discuss this any further, or even to acknowledge that it's happening. " _Leave it_ , Virgil," he warns, a last little growl of anger creeping into his voice as he hopes to put an end to any further discussion. "You told me to stop."

"…I can't, though." Virgil shifts his weight on his crutches, unfailingly awkward without his full range of motion, because he doesn't seem able to stand still, nor to square up and look at Scott as he continues, "Because is it gonna be this way for any of us? What if it was _me_ , what if I'd—if I was…"

It's not really funny, but Scott can't suppress an incongruent little bark of laughter, interrupting before Virgil can concoct a scenario even remotely equivalent to getting their London Agent _pregnant_. "Virgil, you're _gay_. And you haven't dated anyone since _college_."

The longer than average beat of silence that follows this statement is something Scott should pick up on, as Virgil seems to wrestle with the statement. But he pushes past it, and though he speaks quickly and fumbles slightly, he gets back to the point before Scott can catch on. "…Right. Yeah, right. But, I mean…with Gordon. Scott, he's our little brother. And this wasn't one of his one-off one night stands on the mainland, it wasn't just _anybody_. It's _Penelope_. We've known her almost as long as we've been doing this, and Gordon's felt this way about her that whole damn time. Whatever happens, it's not gonna change the fact that he loves her. That…that's just not gonna stop; _you_ can't stop it. You've got no right to try and interfere with this, it's _his_ life. Why shouldn't they want to be together? Why shouldn't they get a chance?"

Even though they're no longer shouting at each other, and even though Scott's shouted him down once already, Virgil's bounced right back, and remains stubborn and relentless Gordon's defense. He's been a better big brother to Gordon in the course of the last hour than Scott has, by a long shot. Scott finds himself wishing that Gordon had gone to Virgil, first, and that between the two of them they'd found a way to soften the news, or just decided that Scott didn't need to know. He wishes he hadn't been told, and though it's not fair, he blames Gordon for the way he feels now, with age old feelings and frustrations raked over like coals, catching and flaring as they find fuel amidst all the other emotional detritus.

"Because when it doesn't work out, it's going to undermine our entire organization," Scott answers, tersely explaining for what feels like the hundredth time, and failing to understand why Virgil just can't seem to parse this reality. "Gordon doesn't _do_ relationships, Gordon bounces from one no-strings one-night encounter to another like a goddamn pinball, he doesn't know how to sustain—"

"That's not it, though." Virgil shifts on his crutches again and hobbles a few steps closer to Dad's desk, though he stays on the far side of it. "Didn't you ever think that the only reason he hasn't properly tried to be with anyone else is because deep down he's always wanted to be with _her_? Like—Scott, do you _really_ not know this about him? It's _always_ been Penelope, and it's _not_ just a crush. Whether they have a kid together or not—and it's _not_ our place to speculate either way—why couldn't it just be okay?"

Scott scowls. "It's not that simple."

"Why _not_?"

"Because—"

Because it isn't _fair_.

The only precedent Scott has to cite is his own relationship, but the problem is; no one _knows_ about his relationship.

No one knows about Jane.

Except for Scott, who knows everything _worth_ knowing about Jane.

Captain Jane Alexandra Carter is twenty-nine years old. She's a Kansas native, ex-Navy, came up flying the same fighters that Scott had in the course of his career, and then retired to civilian life as a cargo pilot for Air Terrarean, and flies as many hours for them as are legally permitted, because you'd need to chain her to the ground if you wanted to keep Jane Carter out of the skies. She's strawberry blonde, 5'11", and can wear the hell out of a pair of beat up Levis just as well as she wears the hell out of a pair of strappy red heels, and on a _very_ good day, Scott gets to see her wear both at the same time. Sometimes it seems like she must've been grown in a vat in a lab, somewhere deep underground where some secret society had slaved over the creation of Scott's idea of the perfect woman, and then released her into the wild and into his life, just when he wanted her most.

Not that he'd gone looking for her. She'd been the one to find _him_ , though she hadn't been looking, months after he'd snatched her neatly from the jaws of death. Serendipitous. It had been a hotel bar in Tokyo, where he'd been spending a rare night off with only one purpose in mind. She'd seen him before he'd seen her, known who he was, though he hadn't been able to place her at first. A drink had made its way into his hand from across the bar, and then she'd very purposefully made her way into his evening.

One thing had led to another. And another. And another, and again and again until it was a year later, and it became necessary to admit that what they had was more than occasional, convenient hook-ups in whatever city Jane happened to find herself, whenever Scott happened to find himself with time off. Whatever ethical quandaries hadn't been enough to stop Scott from sleeping with a rescue victim had been equally powerless to stop him from falling in love with one.

Jane has a career and Scott has a legacy, and somehow, by some miracle he still doesn't fully understand and is afraid to question—somehow they still _work_. Somehow they're still together, two years on and going strong.

What isn't fair is the fact that after all the time and effort and energy Scott's spent, cultivating a love life that strikes a perfect balance between love and life— _Gordon_ can just burst into the middle of their family with the news that he's gotten Penelope pregnant, and somehow they're all just expected to roll with it. Somehow _Virgil_ seems to want to _celebrate_ the fact, which sets Scott's teeth on edge. When Scott's been _careful_ and _responsible_ and never _once_ allowed his romantic life to interfere with the legacy he's been left, no matter how tempting it's been—for some reason, it gets to be _Gordon_ who breaks down that barrier between the personal and the professional, and throw everything into complete disarray.

"—because it just _can't_ ," he answers, finally, stubbornly and means for it to be the final word in the conversation.

If Virgil recognizes the fact, he doesn't care, and plows on regardless, persisting, "What if it _could_ , though? What…what would it take for you to believe this could work?"

It can't, and it isn't going to, and Scott isn't particularly open to any attempts to convince him otherwise, and in hopes of discouraging his brother from trying to continue, he activates the desktop's main console, pulls up a display. He pretends that he needs to cycle through their roster's current status, though everyone's present and accounted for on the island—except for Kayo, though when Scott pulls up her profile and location, she's over the middle of the South Pacific, most probably on approach back home. It's hard not to shake his head at the thought of what she's going to be coming home to, and he exhales a frustrated sigh through his teeth.

He glances up at Virgil, expects to catch him staring back with the big, puppy-dog brown eyes that haven't actually leveraged any sympathy from Scott since the pair of them were twelve and six, respectively—but instead Virgil's staring at the softly glowing display Scott's pulled up, his gaze fixed on Thunderbird Shadow's icon, tracking slowly across the empty blue expanse of the ocean around the island, though in reality she's travelling several times the speed of sound.

"What if…" Virgil starts softly, and then his voice fails him and his gaze drops, abashed and embarrassed about something he hasn't even suggested yet, some hypothetical something that's making the hairs stand up on the back of Scott's neck, as he straightens in his father's chair and faces his little brother directly.

"What if what?"

"…what if me and Kayo were kind of a thing?"


	40. bluster

"Okay."

This is the third time John's said "okay", in the roundabout process of getting to the damn point. Not that Gordon's actually counting, because he's beginning to feel objectively _terrible_ , and not just because of the broader situation. The emotional turmoil is separate entirely from the physical reality that he's had way too much to drink in way too short a timespan, and the worst of it starts to hit at approximately the worst possible time, as John starts to explain a part of Scott's history that Gordon's never been privy to before now. All he can do is close his eyes and listen.

"…All right. So…okay, so you have to bear in mind that I'm not—I'm not _defending_ whatever he said, because I don't doubt that it was probably fairly terrible. I just…I just feel like it's only fair to provide some context, here, because there's a reason Scott's taking this so badly. You _really_ shouldn't have gone to him first, Gordon. Honestly, that was really just objectively a _stupid_ first move. I mean, it's not exactly your fault, you didn't know—but then, there's a reason you didn't know."

Gordon groans at all the preamble and bluster, lost and floundering amidst all the caveats and qualifiers and general detritus surrounding the actual point. "Please use fewer words," he mumbles, and takes a slow, steadying breath. He's still sitting on the floor beside his brother, with his butt parked firmly on the ground and his back pressed solidly against the door—but the room still feels as though it's spinning slowly, a terrestrial imitation of TB5. It would be just like John to set his bedroom to spinning because he misses his Thunderbird. Stupid astronauts. Gordon swallows and tries to keep his breathing shallow against the dizziness.

John, possibly owing to a heightened sense of sympathy for issues with vertigo and dizzines, is immediately apologetic, and his hand finds Gordon's shoulder again, squeezes slightly, a rare gesture of actual comfort from a typically absent elder brother. "…Right. Sorry."

"…Scott got someone pregnant?" Gordon prompts, because he's managed to figure that much out already, though he's still not sure how much bearing it's going to have on the situation at hand, outside of making Scott an enormous fucking hypocrite. That might be helpful in the short term, but he's not sure how helpful it'll be overall.

Beside him, John shifts, and the warmth of his hand leaves Gordon's shoulder, as he sighs and sits cross-legged, his hands landing loosely on his knees. "Yeah. Years and years ago, you were still just a kid. I mean, he was too, really. He was only eighteen, on his way out of highschool. And it was a girl in _my_ class."

This is more math than Gordon's actually able to do off the top of his head, while moderately drunk. He attempts to muddle his way through anyway, in the handy and helpful pause that John's left in the conversation, to allow these facts to sink in. If it's 2062 now and Scott was eighteen about twelve years ago, then this would've been in 2050, or thereabouts. Gordon has to count back to the year of his birth to figure his own age—thirteen or so—and then another three years for John's age at the time—

"Sixteen," he repeats, a little dumbly, wondering why John couldn't just have given him the number straight out, rather than dragging _math_ into the process.

"Sixteen," John confirms, with a weight to the statement that makes it seem significant for some reason, and he goes on to clarify, "That's important, actually. Like, legally, at the time, it was important. If it had happened a few months in either direction—if she'd been fifteen or he'd been nineteen— it would've been a lot worse in black and white. As it stands—still kinda not great. Actually fairly awful, for a lot of reasons."

There's a liquor-soaked and perpetually blitzed little goblin who lives in Gordon's brain, who rolls out of the barrel when Gordon gets drunk, and then stumbles around rambling in scenarios like these, to provide semi-relevant tangential commentary. On this occasion it remarks that it's so absolutely bizarre to be discussing something like this with _John_ , who eschews most labels and prefers only to be known as "deeply uninterested, thanks but no thanks", and is politely repulsed by most discussions of sex and sexuality.

Of course, Gordon's probably done enough fooling around in the course of his life so far to make up for everything John hasn't done, probably several times over. Gordon spent puberty in chlorine scented locker rooms, grew up and grew close with teammates who spent most of their time around him stripped nearly naked. At seventeen he'd competed for Olympic gold in London, and been turned loose in the Olympic Village, under the insufficiently watchful guardianship of a coach who just couldn't keep an eye on him _all_ the time. Surrounded by young, beautiful, athletic people at the very high of their sporting careers, things had followed a rather predictable course.

Ironically, a wild and relatively wayward youth is something Gordon has more in common with Scott than with John, but Scott's not here, and with the door locked behind him, Gordon wants desperately to keep it that way.

At least until he's gathered up some ammunition to fire back with.

"…Who was she?"

This is a predictable question, in Gordon's mind, but it seems to make John uncomfortable, and he fidgets where he sits, toying with the drawstring of his pajama pants and shrugging his shoulders awkwardly. "She was just…nobody. Nobody important. It was a small town high school, you remember what growing up was like for us. Dad was so aboslutely hellbent on the five of us having a reasonably normal adolesence—without the money and the fame and the fact that we were _his_ kids—I don't think any of us had any real concept of what we were actually _worth_ until after you went to the Olympics."

Jefferson Tracy was no idiot and he'd had an iron-clad ideal in mind for the way he wanted to raise his children. Gordon's gold medal lives in a shoebox in his closet, despite the fact that his family's net worth is in the multibillions. This is probably the best and most accurate metaphorical representation of the grounding effect of the childhood that he and his brothers had shared in Kansas.

The little goblin in his brain wants to go on rambling tangent about how much the Olympics are actually worth, what they really cost and how detrimental they actually are to the places that host them, and how he can recite the cities that have hosted the Olympics forwards and backwards for the entire two centuries that they've been ongoing, but that's neither helpful nor relevant at the moment.

Instead he says, "Nobody's nobody."

This gets a dry little huff of laughter. "Cute thought."

" _Johnny_."

If Gordon's got an idealistic streak a mile wide, then John's got a cynical chasm, equally deep, carved through whatever passes for his soul and he just shrugs at the offense in Gordon's tone. "She wasn't enough of anybody for me to remember her name, then. Scott probably does, but then, he's the one who thinks he ruined her life."

The repetition of the exact phrase Scott had used against him makes Gordon feel sick inside, but the little goblin doesn't have time for that, and comes abruptly to a conclusion that gets shrieked into the core of Gordon's brain, sudden and imperative, like there's a second part to this ancient secret—"…oh _fuck_ , though…so, wait—waitwait _wait_ —does Scott have a _kid_?"

" _No_ ," John shuts that down immediately, and there's a sharpness in his voice to match the urgency of Gordon's question. "No, he doesn't. That would've been an _absolute_ nightmare, he was only eighteen and a _complete_ idiot. And she just…she _wasn't_ anybody. She was just somebody he fooled around with, she was no one, really."

Gordon blinks at that, and becomes uncomfortably aware of the way his eyelashes are still damp from weepy, semi-drunken tears. He feels like a bit of an idiot for breaking down, but then, it's been an emotional night. And even if he's right on the brink of hating him, Gordon still knows a couple things about his eldest brother. "Scotty doesn't fool around with just anybody."

John's known him longer, though. "Well, maybe not _now_ , he doesn't. High school was a different story. We grew up in a _tiny_ town, Gordon. I guess there wasn't a whole lot of selection."

They grew up in a town small enough that when Gordon first started to really go out for swimming, it was with the YMCA two towns over and forty-five minutes away. Small enough that the night sky was bright and clear enough for John to fall in love with, to the exclusion of anything else. Small enough that their grandfather had taught Virgil to drive an ancient pickup truck around their property before he'd even turned fourteen, and there was just nobody around to catch them at it. And apparently small enough for Scott not to be choosy about who he fooled around with in high school.

Despite all that, Gordon's still caught on the point he'd snagged on in the first place, which is that people are people, even if John doesn't care enough to quantify them into personhood. "She still had to be _somebody_ ," he persists, stubborn.

Beside him John sighs, and attempts to rephrase the statement, "She was nobody to Scott in the way that Penelope is somebody to you, can I put it to you that way?"

John can put it however the hell he wants, and this is the sort of logic puzzle of a statement that Gordon's in no state to try and parse. He disregards whatever John's trying to tell him and remains stubbornly hung up on the details, "—but what was her _name_ , though?"

A name would be good. A name would be something he could throw directly back at Scott, imbued with his fairly damning history; the secret told like the pin pulled from a grenade, hypocrisy like shrapnel crammed inside it, all of it meant to blow up in his big brother's face.

But John just makes an exasperated little noise and shakes his head. "Gordon, I told you, I don't _remember_. It doesn't matter who she was. She was just some girl. The sort of girl this sort of thing happens to. Scott didn't—he didn't love her. Nothing like that, he barely knew her. I don't know if he even really _liked_ her. And I wouldn't even know this had happened at all, if it hadn't all gone so badly—if it hadn't hurt Scott as bad as it actually did."

Gordon gets the sense that he's been nudged rather firmly back on track, though if the cost is going to be empathizing with Scott, he's not sure he wants any part of this conversation. But curiosity wins out after a few seconds of silence, and reluctantly he asks, "What happened?"

Even when it's something as complicated as this must have been, John has a way of breaking information down into its bare, linear essentials. He does so now, detached and dispassionate, though his fingers still toy nervously with the drawstring of his pajama pants and he doesn't look up as he explains, "Scott got her pregnant. She didn't want to have the baby, but state law in Kansas requires parental consent before a minor can have an abortion. Failing that, it requires a court order waiving the requirement. They went to her parents. They wouldn't consent. They acted like Scott was some kind of monster, instead of just a stupid teenager with bad luck and poor impulse control. Dad got involved. _Lawyers_ got involved. It got ugly. Like, _really_ ugly."

Eighteen-year-old Scott was an entirely different person from thirty-year-old Scott. Gordon can contort his emotions sufficiently that the pang of empathy he feels doesn't actually extend to his older brother, here and now. But there and then—he winces on Scott's behalf at the thought of how big and overwhelming this must have been, how awful he must have felt. "Ugly how?"

"Ugly in a way that had nothing to do with Scott, really. I don't remember much about who _she_ was at all—but from what Scott said after he met them, her parents were the sort of small-minded, small-town _nightmare_ type of people who knew more about what we were worth than _we_ did, because what other sort of person would say the words 'pre-nup' to an eighteen year old? It was pretty obvious from the beginning that they cared more about _our_ money than _their_ daughter. That was the worst part. They wanted him to marry her, and as leverage, they told her that she'd be thrown out of the family if she went through with an abortion or had a child out of wedlock."

Gordon can't quite parse this information immediately. It's more than just the way his brain is buzzing—with booze, with emotion, with a drunken little goblin singing about what gets done with drunken sailors—it's something about the incompatibility of this statement with what a decent parent would ever do. "…But Scott didn't marry her. And Scott doesn't have a kid."

John shakes his head. "No."

From the beginning, Gordon's pretty sure he's felt more compassion for the nameless girl in this story than he does for his older brother, and with the finality in John's answer, he feels a sinking, sudden sense of dread at the natural conclusion to the story. "They didn't _really_ throw her out of her own family?"

Beside him, John just shrugs his narrow shoulders and looks not quite remorseful, so much as quietly resigned to an unfortunate truth. This is another difference between them, because Gordon feels outrage bubbling up at his brother's answer, "She didn't come back to school. Her friends said she moved out of state. I think she might have had an aunt or something, somewhere else? I really don't know. Didn't really want to find out."

It's no wonder Scott believes he ruined this poor girl's life. Gordon's starting to believe it too. "Exactly how small _was_ this town?"

It's rapidly becoming apparent that their family has a bit of a problem with secrets, if something like this could have happened over a decade ago, and Gordon's only finding out about it _now_. John goes on, blithely unaware of the way he's forced his little brother to reevaluate everything he thinks he knows about his childhood, "Small enough that Dad shipped Scott directly off to college and moved the rest of us into Kansas City within the month, rather than letting us stay and get churned through the rumour mill in the aftermath of it all."

" _Shit_ ," Gordon comments, a little alarmed that there was an explanation for their sudden move from the family farmhouse into a sprawling bungalow in the city, all those years ago. The only thing he really remembers about the move is how much closer it had put them to a local pool, a real swim team, and a coach who recognized his potential from an early age. In a weird way, the whole incident probably catalyzed Gordon's own athletic career. "…how old was I, again? Twelve?"

John nods. "Yeah, or just turning thirteen. It was early in the year. Virgil was thirteen turning fourteen, Alan was seven turning eight. You were all too young to be involved at all. And Dad and Grandma kept the whole thing pretty well contained. None of you were meant to know. _I_ probably wouldn't even know if Scott hadn't told me while it was actually happening—but then, he was pretty broken up about the whole thing. He needed somebody to talk to."

The irony isn't lost on Gordon, but he still can't help making the remark, " _You're_ a weird choice." Another two ideas drift into each other and collide in the haze of his thoughts, and he jumps clumsily to another conclusion, only tangentially relevant to the subject at hand. "Is the whole thing with Scott…how it was such a big awful fuck up, and he ruined this girl's life and we had to move and everything…is it why _you_ wound up so weird about sex?"

John scoffs at that, immediately derisive. " _No_ , it's why _Scott_ wound up so weird about sex. Out of every single member of this family, _I_ have absolutely the healthiest _possible_ relationship with sex, thank you very much."

"…Johnny, you have a healthy relationship with sex the same way I have a healthy relationship with _arsenic_."

It wasn't exactly meant as an insult, but it doesn't matter, because John seems inordinately pleased by the comparison. " _Exactly_. And I _definitely_ haven't ever gotten anyone pregnant."

Gordon just shakes his head and closes his eyes as he leans against the door at his back and takes a shaky deep breath. "Neither'd I. I'm just—like, _fuck_ , John. I'm usually _so_ careful."

"I know."

"I don't understand how the hell this even _happened_."

John clears his throat with a careful delicacy. "I mean…"

Before John has to fumble awkwardly over the particulars of how exactly this _happened_ , Gordon interrupts, and hates the way he hears desperation bleeding back into his voice, "What're we gonna do? Me and her, what…how're we even gonna deal with this? I don't…I can't let her do it alone. Whatever she does, she _can't_ do it alone. Johnny, what the fuck do I do?"

Gordon's been sat on the floor beside his brother for long enough that the room's stopped spinning, but an emotional sort of vertigo starts to kick in, and it feels as though the floor's beginning to crumble away beneath him, as his thoughts trip and stumble through a minefield of remorse and regret. Dwelling on Scott's past had been almost enough to detach him from his own present, and the reality of what's happened between him and Penelope, but the truth begins to reassert itself now, and Gordon begins to feel sick again. The odds of it are still so absolutely staggering, such a mundane little mischance, and yet it still feels like it threatens everything about his entire life. He finds himself hoping desperately that whatever John tells him will help, somehow, though he isn't sure what advice a twenty-eight year old virgin is going to be able to offer.

But if John has an answer for him, Gordon doesn't get to hear it. Before his big brother can say anything, there's a low, familiar rumble up from the very heart of the island, an unmistakable tremor that could only be caused by one possible thing.

John's room, like the rest of the villa, is sound proofed to the point that the launch of a Thunderbird is muffled, muted. But there's a skylight, and it's angled in such a way that TB1 can be seen as it rockets into the sky overhead, an unexpected sight that has John staring upward, his gaze fixed on the skylight and the trail of smoke left behind in Scott's wake. The relief Gordon feels at the idea that Scott has gone away is almost inexpressible, but as he glances over at John in a clumsy attempt to express it, he falters at the sight of his brother's face.

"…You've been drinking," John says, a statement and not a question, though there's a leading lilt to his voice, a change in his tone that cuts through all the rambling and bluster, sharp as a blade. "Had _Scott_ been drinking?"

"Uh…"

John doesn't wait for an answer, and gets to his feet with surprising grace for someone not usually bound by the confines of gravity. Gordon starts to follow him, but almost immediately thinks better of it, as the entire room swoops and tilts slightly as he tries to stand. Instead he just watches as John strides briskly across the room to his desk, and with a brief gesture brings a holographic console to life. Almost as an afterthought, he addresses the room at large, "EOS, render the primary comm sphere control matrix for me, please."

"FAB, John."

The answer is immediate, prim and ghostly, the sweetly synthesized tones of EOS' voice emanating from the suite of speakers John has placed around his room. Gordon can't help but start a little bit at the sound of the disembodied voice, and distantly he wonders how long she's been listening, as the entire room flares around him into a holographic replica of the inside of TB5's commsphere, complete with a live global map tracking all of the Thunderbirds. Four of five register their positions at Tracy Island. The fifth travels at Mach 17 and is already over two hundred miles away, in the minute or so it's taken to pull up a location tracker.

John's moved to the center of the room and the center of the glowing blue sphere rendered around him, and is glaring at TB1's icon, moving in an arcing path across the South Pacific. "EOS," he says again, still glowering at the approximation of TB5. "Get me a live biometric readout from Scott's blues, please."

The only acknowledgment that the request has been granted is the familiar chime of a comm line opening and then the very softest hiss of static as the line goes live. Inverted from Gordon's perspective, a window opens in John's field of view, curving along the inner curve of the sphere around him, the biometrics he'd requested, updating second by second. There's a single line flaring bright red in the listed data.

And after a few moments of silence, John says, in a tone that approaches actual awe, "I'm gonna fucking _kill him_."


	41. surge

There's no way in hell he was ever going to beat Scott down to the hangar.

Certainly he couldn't have prevented TB1 from taking off, even possessed of the knowledge that Scott's been drinking and hasn't slept, and technically isn't legally elligible to fly. Even without the broken leg and the flight of stairs in between him and the nearest elevator, there's no way Virgil could've stopped him. He'd been a little too stunned in the aftermath of his admission even to try. He'd just stared at his brother, as the secret he'd told hung in the air between them, secret no longer.

There'd been the barest, briefest moment of absolute fury and disgust—a flicker of terrible darkness across Scott's features, but still only a minute fraction of what Gordon must've gotten—and then Scott had apparently reached the upper limit of his tolerance for suddenly revealed secrets, and decided to disengage completely. He'd gotten up from Dad's desk, strode briskly past Virgil, and gone straight for his own elevator down to TB1, vanishing before Virgil could say so much as a single word in explanation.

Scott's probably a better pilot drunk than probably half the pilots in the world are sober—and he's emphatically not drunk, probably onlyjust past the legal limit set by the Global Aviation Authority—but still. IR's ability to operate in the wider world depends upon an absolutely unimpeachable reputation. When John finds out, if he doesn't know already, there's going to be hell to pay.

But Virgil hasn't gone down to the hangar to stop Scott launching, so much as to catch Kayo, landing.

Not, of course, that he knows what he's going to say to her. He has to tell her, obviously, because if she doesn't hear it from him, then she might hear it from Scott. As bad as it'll be for Virgil to tell her what he's done, it would be a million times worse if she heard it from Scott.

He shouldn't have said anything.

It was stupid. He's been stupid, done something so stupid, and she's going to be furious. Virgil doesn't even really know why he'd done it, there'd been no real reason to. The secret he's kept so carefully for upwards of a year, privately delighting in how easy it was to carry on without any of his brothers suspecting a thing—and nowScott knows. Maybe he had some deep and noble pretension towards solidarity with his little brother; maybe he'd been hoping to prove by example that it was possible for members of their family to have relationships that didn'tbring IR crashing down around their ears—but it's going to backfire. There's an ironic cruelty to the fact that telling people about his relationship with Kayo is probably about the only way Virgil could possibly have ruined his relationship with Kayo—but goddamned if he hasn't gone and done it anyway.

"Relationship" is probably a bit of a generous term, anyway.

He can't pretend that he and Kayo have anything like what Gordon and Penelope have. Not even if the pair of them are the only reason he secretly wants it. Not even if Gordon and Penelope set a precedent that Virgil secretly aspires to. Not even if all he wants is someone to be close with, connected to, by bonds of intimacy and affection and hell, maybe even actual love.

What if me and Kayo were kind of a thing?

Scott had left before Virgil had even had the chance to fumblingly explain what kind of thing they even were, in this not-so-hypothetical scenario that had apparently been the final straw, as far as Scott was concerned. The ambiguity is probably fairly damning, but what Virgil can't figure out is whether the truth would've been worse— that he and Kayo habitually enjoy the occasional clandestine, no-strings-attached sexual encounter. If he's honest, Virgil thinks that this sounds far more compatible with his older brother's sensibilities, especially considering the way he's reacted to learning about Penelope and Gordon. But Scott hadn't stuck around to make his preferences clear.

Turning all of this over in the churning maelstrom of his brain makes for an emotionally taxing ascension up the flight of stairs that connect to Shadow's landing platform.

Of course, the hangar was never designed for access by people in reduced states of mobility, and it's physically taxing, too. By the time Virgil's made his way to the platform where Thunderbird Shadow lives, Kayo's already about halfway through her post-flights. There's no way she hasn't heard him, huffing and puffing his way upwards—but she doesn't look up until he manages to make his way to the top, crutches and broken leg and all.

"Evening," she says, outwardly cool and unruffled, and for a moment Virgil wants to pretend that he's only projecting suspicion onto her, and that she's not already onto him. "What's up? I saw Scott take off while I was on approach, is everyone back on call?"

Virgil can tell by the way she looks at him, head cocked slightly, her expression cautiously guarded, that she's already thrown off by the fact that he's here, waiting for her. She already knows something's wrong, because why else would he have hauled his stupid broken leg all the way down to meet her? This isn't the way they operate, never has been. She has to know that something's up.

"Not exactly. We, uh. We…we got…some news." This is already off to a bad start, so Virgil decides just to go plunging into the icy waters of the deep end and hope that the bigger bombshell will somehow soften the impact of his own confession. "Penelope's pregnant."

It takes a lot to startle Kayo, but it takes even more to visibly startle Kayo. Her amber eyes widen and she immediately turns away from examining her ailerons to gape, unambiguously stunned, at Virgil. "No way," she says, immediately disbelieving. "Penelope's pregnant?"

Virgil nods.

"…her and Gordon?"

Another nod, and he swallows back whatever he might've tried to say, reflexively coming to his little brother's defense, as Kayo goes on.

"Gordon like our Gordon? Gordon who never leaves the house without at least six flavours of condom on his person? Gordon, who bounded gleefully up to the plate when Scott didn't want to give Alan the Talk, because safe-sex is the closest thing in his life to a religion? Gordon's bedposts are more notches than bedpost by this point, he knows how not to knock a person up. You're telling me Gordon got Penelope pregnant?"

There's nothing to do but nod again. "Yeah."

"How the fuck did that happen?"

Try as he might, he can't quite resist the play on words. "Well, the fuck is how that happened. Back in January."

"In January." Despite the fact that she'd been the one to propose the idea of Gordon and Penelope hooking up in the first place, when offered confirmation of this theory, Kayo still sounds incredulous. "He told you?"

Virgil hesitates now, and suddenly he's back in the middle of a minefield of a conversation once again, trying to pick his way around the obvious hazards. "He told Scott. Scott told me." And then I told Scott about us.

He catches himself before the natural cadence of the conversation can carry him into trouble, and just watches Kayo, reacting. There's not much to see. She's a difficult person to read. Always has been. Naturally, habitually guarded. It's why it had taken him so long to be certain that her glances in the downstairs gym during their occasional mutual workouts were actually what he imagined they were. It's why the tension between them had been at a low, slow, almost invisible simmer for just the longest time, stewing away in the biochemical cocktail of endorphins and hormones and whatever else makes up the constitution of people who work out a lot (a lot) because they're lonely and celibate. It's why they'd even happened in the first place, because he'd been involuntarily drawn into the inherent mystery about her, and the tantalizing question of what if.

Kayo scoffs lightly now and shakes her head. Her ponytail bounces back and forth between her shoulders. "Well, Scott just vacated island airspace at no less than Mach 17, so I imagine that went about as well as expected."

"Yeah. Gordon threw a bottle of whiskey at him."

Kayo's even harder to shock than she is to startle, but now she actually gasps. "Jesus. How ugly did this get?"

"Very" is only the beginning of the answer. But Virgil hesitates.

There's a terrible temptation here, and his life would be so much easier if he could fail to recognize it for exactly what it is; one of his worst qualities feeding into one of hers. Kayo's an insatiable gossip. Virgil's a habitual people-pleaser. She cloaks her desire for other people's secrets in the guise of her role as IR's security officer, but with a year of her intimate company behind him, Virgil's learned that she's got an almost unhealthy fixation with knowing what people don't want her to know. Idle conversation about their mutual acquaintances (mostly his brothers) is one of the only ways to stretch out the time they spend together—to extend it beyond pure physicality and into something more like a real relationship. Lying together in the afterglow, it's hard to avoid the trap of just spiraling up into everything she could want to know about the people who trust him most in the world.

It would be so easy to just keep spooling out details about the blowout between Scott and Gordon—the drink they'd shared, the initial screaming match, the way Scott had started ranting and raving at Virgil in Gordon's absence—it's all gossip of the juiciest, most dramatic sort. Other people's sins are more than capable of catching and keeping Kayo's attention, but it's one of Virgil's own transgressions that needs to be addressed. Anything else is stalling, and he knows himself too well not to know it.

"It got really bad," he answers, as honestly as he can. She's taken her usual tone, she sounds the way she always does, when they barter and banter back and forth about the details of other people's lives, but Virgil doesn't respond in kind. Instead he just shifts his weight where he stands on his crutches and shakes his head to himself. "I mean honestly, it was terrible. It was really, honestly, just fucking awful. Scott took it beyond badly. He thinks Penelope should get an abortion, he thinks that Gordon doesn't deserve to be part of IR or of this family if she and him want to carry on. He doesn't think they should be together, even though he loves her. I've never seen him get this angry, I have no idea why it set him off so bad."

"Ooh," Kayo murmurs, and the note of intrigue is unmistakable. He could just keep going. There's plenty more to say, and it would spare him saying the thing he doesn't want to.

"…But that's not what I need to talk to you about. It's…even the thing with Gordon and Penelope—that's not why I came down here."

She's already abandoned her postflights, though they don't need doing that urgently if she's not going to be going out again anytime soon. She's still in uniform, but a different variant than her standard IR kit. Her flightsuit is a charcoal colour that varies between light and shadow as she moves, as her shoulders shift and her posture adjusts. He wonders if she realizes that her arms have folded across her chest, that she's cocked one of her hips slightly and taken an almost confrontational posture. He wonders if she could imagine how much harder she's making this.

"What's wrong?" she prompts, and there's the leading edge of suspicion in her voice, subtle and dire. He's definitely not imagining it now. "Virgil?"

Well. This is it. He has to take a deep breath and close his eyes in order to actually say the words—

—and when he does, they're not the words he was supposed to say. Like what he said to Scott, he doesn't even really know why he says it, when he tells her—

"—I think I'm in love with you."

And her stunned answering silence is still only the second worst thing he's heard tonight.


	42. downpour

When it rains, it pours.

And when Gordon drinks, he vomits.

In the grand scheme of things, Gordon getting drunk and barfing is several orders of magnitude less serious than Scott getting drunk and flying—but one of these problems is more immediate than the other, and had manifested with a certain urgency. And so John had been stymied in the act of calling his older brother up and ordering him to return to the island immediately, in favour of helping his little brother stumble to his feet and then stagger in the direction of the ensuite bathroom before he could ruin the carpet at the foot of John's bedroom door. By the time he'd gotten Gordon situated, propped gingerly against the toilet and with the sliding glass door of the shower left suggestively open, Scott's long gone.

So that's another problem.

"Where's he headed?" John asks EOS at length, trusting her to know who he means.

Of course she does, and her answer is prim and prompt, "His current flightpath would indicate Singapore as a probable destination. At his present speed of Mach 15, he should arrive within the hour."

John leans against the frame of the cracked open bathroom door, absently listening to the small concert of whimpers and groans from his little brother. Gordon's in just a hell of a state and obviously needs looking after, and so John's not about to leave him alone, even though Scott's current actions seem like they should take priority. At least he doesn't seem to be going far.

"I don't know what the hell he could want in Singapore, but I guess we've gotta be glad he's not headed for Auckland." John sighs and rubs his eyes. Sixteen hours of sleep seem suddenly insufficient to the immensity of the situation at hand, but equally he knows he's done more with less. "Okay. Is Virgil around?"

EOS is broadly prohibited from surveillance of the island by any means that would intrude upon his family's privacy. With that caveat, she does have access to the cameras that monitor the lounge and and the island generally, as well as the cameras that cover every angle of the hangar, and in this case can answer the question. "He seems to have followed Scott down to the hangar. Thunderbird Shadow has just landed."

Kayo's probably not going to be especially useful, so her return doesn't really matter one way or the other, but he could've done with Virgil more readily to hand. "Great. Ugh, okay. Forget Virgil. It'd take him fifteen minutes to get up here from the hangar. I need another pair of hands." There are, abruptly, a lot of people in dire need of management. So far, he's got Penelope, alone and pregnant in Auckland; Scott, flying drunk to Singapore; and Gordon, noisily retching in the bathroom. John has better things to do than babysit Gordon.

Considering the situation, he's probably best served not to use that exact phrasing.

"Current patterns of data usage on Tracy Island suggest that Alan is awake," EOS offers. "I can tell him that you need his help."

That's tempting, and it would be more efficient than John doing so himself, but considering the delicacy of the current situation, John's pretty sure he should keep EOS' direct involvement to a minimum. Especially considering the broader discussion that they're going to need to have about what she'd known, how and when she'd known it, and why it's a thorny ethical problem that she had.

"No, I'll do it. Keep a live read on Scott's flightpath and biometrics and meet me downstairs at the main console, please. I'll let Alan know what's going on and get him in here. Thanks, EOS."

"Of course, John."

The suite of holographic displays that she'd activated in his bedroom dim into darkness, and she fades from the room as she does as he's asked, and directs her attention elsewhere. It's funny how he can tell that she's left, how he's developed a sense of her presence, though she occupies no meaningful physical space. He remembers better now, the conversation they'd had, when she'd first teased the fact that she knew a secret and wanted to share it. She'd also told him that, out of his brothers, he was the only one with a true partner; someone outside of his family who'd made herself a part of his everyday life.

If John had been told five years ago that he would one day have a soulmate, his reaction would've been blunt skepticism and a particularly unkind streak of condescension towards anyone who believed in anything as fanciful as a soul. If he'd been told that soulmate would be a semi-legal sentient AI construct who had cobbled herself together from the base elements of his old code—and that sometimes a soul is just whatever quintessential, undefineable thing that two kindred spirits recognize within each other—that would have substantially tempered the disbelief.

John wonders briefly, idly, whether Gordon and Penelope are soulmates. It's probably not the right time to ask. Instead he knocks softly on the cracked open door, less to get his brother's permission to enter and more to announce the fact that he's doing so, and steps into the bathroom.

"Gordon?"

Gordon groans weakly in acknowledgement, but doesn't lift his head from where it rests against his arm against the toilet seat. Instead he lifts his free hand to fumble blindly for the lever to flush the toilet. There's a muffled roar and a hollow rush of water and then an audible deep breath in the silence that follows, before he comes to an obvious conclusion, "I drank too much."

"Yeah, I can tell."

"Scotty didn't get as drunk as me. S'just had the one drink. I had, like, four." A rather feeble hiccup follows this declaration and then a pained little whimper as he adds, "But I don't think I have 'em anymore."

"Good riddance," John agrees blandly, and it's hard not to wonder if things would've gotten anywhere near this messy if alcohol hadn't gotten involved. "Don't worry about Scott right now, Gordon. Are you okay?" He pauses and adds, "…all things considered?"

Gordon coughs, rather wetly, and takes a moment to consider all the things, before he answers with more hope than certainty— "—'m done throwing up?"

"Well, that's good." Progress is progress, anyway, though abject misery is hardly a good look on his brother. "Do you want to have a shower, maybe?"

Gordon rubs a hand through dry hair. "Had a shower," he mumbles. "Don't wanna."

"Do you maybe want to go lie down?" Gordon's bedroom is only one door down from John's, but it seems like an insurmountable distance, and so he makes a charitable offer, "You can take my bed, if you want."

"…nuh uh…"

"No? Do you want to go to your bed?"

"I want Penny."

This is the first statement that's been made with absolute certainty, but there's such an unbearable note of heartbroken longing in Gordon's voice that John's instinctive first thought is how exactly he would go about getting Penny. Common sense reasserts control shortly thereafter and he discards the nascent beginnings of a plan, in light of the fact that bringing Penelope to the island could only possibly catalyze further drama. Instead he crouches down, so better to hear his brother's answer, as he gently asks, "Do you want to go back to Auckland?"

This finally gets Gordon to pick up his head and nod, with as much vigour as he can muster in his current state, as he answers, "Uh huh."

"Okay. I'll make that happen. I'm gonna go get Alan out of bed so he can keep an eye on you, and then I've gotta head downstairs." John hesitates, and then tactfully inquires, "Should I tell him what's going on, or do you want to?"

"Nnh. You can." Gordon shudders visibly and then huddles a little closer to the toilet. "…I'll wait here," he finishes miserably.

"That's probably best," John agrees. "Just sit tight, then." He gives Gordon a final, comforting pat on the shoulder before ducking out of the bathroom and heading for Alan's room.

Glancing idly out the floor to ceiling window that stretches the length of the hallway, John watches distant lightning glimmer along the edge of dark, forboding clouds, as the storm that rumbled over the island makes its way seaward once more, leaving the skies overhead to grow clear in its wake. If it weren't for the weather, it would've be a beautiful night. Briefly distracted, it just so happens that John's also watching as a shadow of another type moves across the sky—Kayo, leaving the island yet again. Distantly John makes a mental note of her departure, but doesn't make anything of it, other than to wonder why she'd returned to the island at all, if she intended to depart again so shortly after.

It only takes one sharp rap on his baby brother's door before Alan appears, wide awake and with his headphones looped around his neck, still blaring tinny game audio at a volume that seems as though it should've deafened him by now. The headphones are a charitable concession to John's presence; normally Alan's room reverberates with the sounds of his weekly game of choice. "Hey!" Alan says, and his grin is bright and his voice is chipper and, John suspects, highly caffeinated. "Wanna come play Skullzone?"

"Not right now," John declines, and then suddenly finds himself struck by the immensity of the news he needs to break, and how enormously difficult it is to broach the topic. He can't imagine how hard it must have been for Gordon to try and tell Scott. "Uh. Actually, there's, uh…been…a development. I need you to come with me."

John's got a well practiced and nearly impenetrable poker face, the sort that remains calmly inscrutable to panicky rescue victims. But he's off the clock and this is a different sort of crisis than usual, and so something about his expression must tell the severity of the development in question, because Alan spooks immediately, eyes growing wide and startled as he takes a half step through the doorway, ready to follow even if he doesn't know where he's going.

"What's wrong? What happened? Is it Grandma? Is Grandma okay?"

His concern is endearing, if misplaced, and John's quick to correct the assumption, reassuring his little brother, "Grandma's fine, Alan. It's, uh. It's Gordon, actually."

Alan still goggles at him, no less alarmed. "What happened to Gordon?"

"Well…it's more what's happened to Lady Penelope."

Alan blinks at this, confused. "What happened to Lady Penelope?"

"Well, Gordon got her pregnant."

Finally Alan's jaw drops open and then clicks closed as he swallows his disbelief in favour of a hushed, startled whisper, as though he's clandestinely letting his older brother in on some enormous secret— "…Johnny, people have to have sex to get pregnant!"

Even in light of the current situation, it's impossible not to make a dry, sardonic rejoinder, "You know, actually I think I have heard something like that? And all this time I was just so sure it had something to do with storks."

Alan shakes his head, still plainly stunned by the news. John steps back as his little brother braces his hands against the frame of his door and leans out into the hallway, looking left and right, presumably for Gordon. "…how'd you find out? Did he tell you, is he home? Who else knows?"

It's not really the usual flavour of sitrep, but John's still good at breaking a series of events down to their meaningful essentials and he does so now, brusque. "As far as I can tell, Gordon got home, got drunk; told Scott, got in a fight with Scott, got a bottle of whiskey and threw it at Scott, and then bolted for my room, presumably to hide under my bed, except I was still in it. We talked for a while and he told me what happened, and then he took a bit of a turn, right around the time that Scott took off. I left Gordon throwing up in my bathroom. I need to go yell at Scott." John pauses. "Guess where you come in."

There's a moment's pause as Alan figures this out. "Gross," he concludes, but John knows he'll still do what's necessary.

"I think he's through the worst of it. I just need someone to have an eye on him. He's not doing great."

Alan reaches up to toggle his headphones off, pulling them from around his neck and dropping them just inside his bedroom door. He glances briefly over his shoulder at the game still running on his computer in the corner of his bedroom, before disregarding it entirely and stepping into the hallway. John's still in his pajamas, but Alan's still wearing the board shorts and t-shirt he'd been wearing when John had last seen him. It's late, pushing three in the morning, but though he yawns and stretches, Alan doesn't seem the least bit tired, more excited by the moment as he goes on, "Holy shit, though. So I'm gonna be an uncle? And Gordon's gonna be a dad? Grandma's gonna be a great-grandma, if Gordon and Lady P have a kid. Oh, man. Does Grandma know? Is she still asleep? Can I tell her? What d'you think—"

"Alan," John interrupts, catching his shoulder and heading Alan off at the proverbial pass, "It's…kind of too early to know how this is going to go. Ultimately. Scott's already taking the news pretty badly—as evidenced by the fact that he's currently flying to Singapore for some reason—and Gordon's not exactly holding up well. I don't know how Penelope's doing, I need to find out if there's anything I can do for her. But…we don't know for sure what's going to happen, yet. And talking about any kind of future as though it's a sure thing…" John trails off, shaking his head to himself as he remembers EOS and her absolute conviction about a hypothetical future that's become their actual present. He waves the thought away, and tries to summon the appropriate conviction as he continues, "It's just not the time to speculate. They've only known for a few hours. Everyone's going to need time to adjust to the news, and what gets done about it…" John shrugs. "We just don't know. Maybe don't talk about it too much."

There's a reality going very carefully unstated here, but Alan still manages to catch on. His expression grows serious and he nods solemnly. "Ooh. Okay." He grimaces slightly as he glances down the hallway. "I guess now's not the time to ask if I can go to Seoul for my birthday, huh?"

John absolutely has not forgotten his little brother's upcoming twentieth birthday, and even if he had, he trusts that EOS would've reminded him. "Honestly, if you want to get to Seoul for your birthday, the likelihood of it happening just increased dramatically. I think we're going to need some time off to process this. We're all a bit shaken up." He follows Alan's gaze and glances meaningfully back towards his bedroom door. "Mostly Gordon. Understandably."

"I'll look after him," Alan promises immediately.

"Thanks, Al."

Alan flicks a little mock salute off his temple. "You got it, boss."

They part ways in the corridor, Alan heading on and John heading down, towards the stairs at the end of the hallway. As he leaves his little brother's line of sight, John's pace becomes quicker and his stride more purposeful. Unobserved, his expression darkens from careful, measured neutrality into proper, legitimate anger. Gordon's taken care of, Gordon's been handed off and h handled. Penelope is beyond the range of anything John can do at the moment, though as soon as he can manage, he's going to figure out what he can do for her.

And then there's Scott.

John's pretty sure he's going to kill Scott.

When he gets down to the lounge, he can still smell bourbon. Briskly crossing the room to take a seat at his father's desk, he steps gingerly in bare feet in case there's still a stubborn shard of glass lying invisibly in wait. As he approaches the desk, the display comes to life in front of him; EOS reacting to his presence, pulling up the same data he'd requested in his bedroom, before he even needs to ask.

"Thunderbird One is currently over the middle of the South Pacific, " she reports crisply. "His speed has increased to Mach 16. Estimated time of arrival in Singapore is thirteen minutes."

John curses under his breath. The sight of TB1's icon tracking stubbornly across a field of bright blue is enough to set John's blood to a low simmer once again, and he glosses over his usual politesse with his partner as he curtly gives an order, "Open a comm channel. Secure line, no record. Scrub the call history after the connection closes."

"FAB, John."

There's a familiar, crystalline chime, and then the line rings once. Then twice. Halfway through the third ring, it cuts off, replaced by the equally familiar silence of a patent comm line. Scott doesn't answer immediately, and so John's tone is brusque, frigid, "Tracy Island calling TB1, copy?"

There's a long pause, and then, almost equally terse— "Yeah, I copy."

This is where the formality ends, replaced by raw, unmistakable fury that creeps into John's voice as he orders, "Scott, get your ass back here immediately, you're flying with a BAC in violation of GAA regs. Forget the fact that you haven't slept, you've been drinking. You can't fly."

This doesn't change the fact that Scott is flying, and intends to continue to do so. "I'm fine."

"You're illegally flying a Class Six vessel in international airspace with a blood alcohol content of 0.06. Turn around now."

"No."

In hindsight, short of remote overriding TB1's controls, John's not sure if he could've reasonably expected to say or do anything that would make Scott stop, turn around, and contritely fly home. By now it's almost a moot point—he's further away from the island than he is from his apparent destination, and if John's goal is to get him back on the ground then he's best served to let him continue on, land, and then to prevent him from flying again before he's sobered up. He feels his back teeth grit together as he realizes that Scott must've thought of this. There's something especially galling about being outsmarted by his older brother, and historically John's always taken it badly.

"Where are you going?" he demands, and doesn't really expect an answer to this question, either. "Wherever you land, if authorities decide to—"

"Decide to what? Breathalyze me?" Scott scoffs. "Right. Because that's the first reaction anyone has when a Thunderbird lands. I'll be within legal limits by the time I land. I had one goddamn drink. A drink and a half. I guarantee there are pilots in the air right now who're drunker than I am. It's fine."

"It's not fine!" There's no one to glare at, but John glares anyway. "You don't get to hide behind IR's reputation while simultaneously violating the standards of that reputation! What the fuck are you doing, Scott, seriously. This is illegal. Do you understand that? If anyone finds out—"

Scott cuts him off, derisive. "No one's going to find out." There's a pause, and the question that follows is somehow a threat, as Scott asks, "Are they?"

John doesn't answer.

As of now, the only people aware of Scott's current and ongoing indiscretion are Scott himself, John, EOS and Gordon. John very much doubts that Gordon's in any state to do anything with the information, even if he might be hurt and angry enough to want to punish Scott with something as damning as this. Ironically, considering the repercussions it could have on IR, even Gordon would probably check himself. EOS won't do anything without John's permission, holding him as a higher authority than the mundane technicalities of international law, which is itself an ethical dilemma that sets the mind reeling, such that John has to think sideways around it in order to live with it.

He drops into the chair behind the desk, suddenly exhausted, sixteen hours of sleep woefully inadequate to the demands of only half an hour of crisis. The oppressive silence that encapsulates the villa has never been more maddening than it is now. He closes his eyes and pinches his fingers at the bridge of his nose, trying to tease out some tiny sound to take hold of, some delicate fuzz of white noise to fill the void where his thoughts need to be, to give them something to cling to as he tries to find his way to the answer.

The display for the hologram above the desk hums ever so softly. The vents that circulate air throughout the villa are on, working hard against the humidity that came with the storm, and the rush of cool air is barely audible unless one is listening for it. Opening his eyes and lifting his gaze skyward, to the panes of soundproof glass that separate the inside from the outside, John can see water still running down the glass, though the rain outside seems to have stopped.

It doesn't help. No answers manifest, hidden in the meaningless roar of silence.

If John were so inclined, a call to the authorities on the ground in Singapore would result in Scott's immediate detention upon arrival. It would hardly be the first whistle John's blown in the course of his time as Thunderbird 5, but it would be the first blown in his family's direction. Strictly speaking, it would be the right thing to do. Legally, by his awareness of Scott's current state, he's made himself—and IR by extension—complicit.

And every moment that passes brings Scott closer to his destination, and further from John's ability to stop him, to remote override TB1's controls, and to force the ship home, and his brother along with it. The time its taken him to think about it is almost like a refuge from actually needing to do anything, and in a terrible way it's almost a relief to watch his brother's ship, tracking across the blue expanse of the hologram, closer and closer to making it all a moot point.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, so as to sound calmer and more rational than he feels, as he challenges his brother, "You're asking me to let this go. You're putting our entire family's reputation at risk, putting IR's operation at risk—and I'm just supposed to let you do it. Is that how this is?"

This silence has an answer in it, and it's as damning as anything Scott could've said.

A few more moments pass, shorter than they seem, and Scott decides to say something anyway.

"If you were gonna stop me, John, you'd have done it by now."

Scott's right and John hates that he's right. But he's also made John angry. And that's not without an associated cost.

"Okay," he says, as an icy calm descends along with the resolution of what's going to happen next. "If you're going to tell me what I will or won't do, Scott, then the least I can do is return the favour. So you listen, because I'll tell you once, and then I'm scrubbing this call, along with any and all evidence that it ever took place. Once I hang up, you're on your own. You are going to land wherever you plan on landing, as soon as TB1 is on the ground, it's going into lockdown. You are going to get yourself, with immediacy, to the first place you can readily get your stupid ass completely plastered, such that your current BAC is indiscernible from any subsequent BAC, just in case anybody has occasion to check. You don't come home until you're sober enough to be fucking ashamed of yourself. If anyone calls you out before that, I don't help you. If anyone requests our records regarding your biometrics from tonight, I give them what we've got, unaltered. If our brothers want to know the truth about what you've done, I tell them. And I hope you realize that if Dad had made it as far as an actual grave, he'd been spinning in it right now. We're done for tonight. Don't call back."

He disconnects the call before Scott has a chance to say anything further, and waves a hand to clear the display, returning the villa to relative darkness and silence.


	43. raindrops

The rain's stopped.

It hasn't been long since the rain stopped, so everything is still soaking wet outside, but all Gordon had wanted when Alan had crept into John's room to check on him had been to get outside and get some fresh air beneath the slowly clearing night sky. And even if everything's still soaking wet, there's nothing like a chill in the air, and Alan's still in board shorts and a t-shirt where he sits at the edge of the pool, dangling his feet in the water. Gordon's in jeans and a sweatshirt, and he's opted to collapse, recumbent, on one of the lounge chairs—also soaking wet, but from what Alan can tell, Gordon doesn't care.

But then, he's obviously got bigger things to care about at the moment.

John said not to talk about it, so Alan isn't talking about it. For once, Gordon doesn't seem especially talkative. He's got one of his arms wrapped across his eyes, back and shoulders propped up against the backrest of the chair. Alan keeps stealing glances over his shoulder, trying to figure out if Gordon's fallen asleep—but he can't quite be sure, and he doesn't want to bother him if he hasn't, or wake him if he has. If Gordon's current experience with alcohol is anything like Alan's one and only experience with alcohol, then Gordon probably feels like death warmed over. And if accidentally getting your girlfriend pregnant is anywhere near as devastating as Alan can only imagine it is, then the alcohol is probably the least of the reasons that Gordon feels like shit.

It's probably good that John told him not to talk about it, because Alan has no idea what he'd even say, anyway.

Not to Gordon, at least.

Alan's comm is still in his pocket. He fishes it out with another surreptitious glance at his brother, but Gordon hasn't moved. It's still dark out, but by the bluish lights glowing up from beneath the surface of the pool, Alan can see him breathing. As a bare minimum requirement for keeping an eye on Gordon, that seems to be satisfactory. And he doesn't react as Alan's thumbs start to skitter across the touchscreen of his comm.

AS-Tracy: dude, sorry I bailed

BBBrrngr: oh no prob! figured you had to go fly ur rocket

AS-Tracy: nah, my brother came to get me for non-rocket related reasons

BBBrrngr: 1 2 3 or 4?

AS-Tracy: 5, actually.

BBBrrngr: i thought u were 5?

AS-Tracy: in the age order. as tbirds, descending, we're actuall 3

BBBrrngr: that seems...complicated

AS-Tracy: and yet somehow we manage

BBBrrngr: why don't you just switch numbers so they match

AS-Tracy: why should we? we know who we are

BBBrrngr: lol ok

AS-Tracy: anyway yeah. john came to get me and it was kinda urgent.

BBBrrngr: everything ok?

AS-Tracy: think so. just some family drama.

BBBrrngr: oooh?

It's hard not to perceive the eagerness of interest there, even in bright neon blue text rendered holographically above the screen. Alan bites his lower lip and shifts where he sits. The concrete is uncomfortably firm beneath him and cool if not cold, and on the surface of the pool, a stray palm frond floats by. Something about it seems somehow judgmental, and so Alan deflects the question.

AS-Tracy: yeah, it'll be okay. some stuff kinda got ugly between my brothers I guess. sounds like they had a pretty bad fight.

AS-Tracy: like a throwing things and screaming fight.

AS-Tracy: those don't really happen much

AS-Tracy: so I dunno

BBBrrngr: what happened?

The question comes right back around again, and explicit this time. And now Alan hesitates.

There aren't many people he talks to outside his immediate family, and therefore there's not a great deal for Alan to talk about besides his immediate family. Usually their lives are filled with enough high adventure and feats of superheroic awesomeness that it's easy to keep a conversation going without getting into tremendously personal territory.

It's funny, how he'd happened into an incidental accquaintance and then eventually a proper friendship with Brandon Berringer, because in a lot of ways their lives are almost comparable. Bran's from a similarly wealthy background, and no stranger to jetting to the other side of the world at a moment's notice, to shoutcast as a guest at a gaming convention or to organize a flashmob of his viewers in the middle of downtown Amsterdam. He's been to space, he's got a pilot's license. He gets up to the same sort of high-adrenaline adventures Alan does—backcountry snowboarding down pristine slopes, parasailing behind his godfather's yacht, scuba diving into the depths of abandoned shipwrecks—only he doesn't do these things to save lives, but for the entertainment of an audience of millions.

Alan does not have an audience of millions. But he does have four brothers, whereas Brandon is an orphaned only child, and the ward of a moderately indifferent legal guardian, and sometimes it almost seems like he's more interested in the domestic side of Alan's life than he is in the things they actually have in common. Alan's known him long enough now to have caught a glimpse of a kind of loneliness he can't even begin to imagine, of someone who's only ever imagined what it would be like to have a family like Alan's. It's hard not to feel bad about that. It's easier than it should be to give in to his friend's curiosity.

AS-Tracy: okay, well

AS-Tracy: promise you won't tell anyone, okay?

BBBrrngr: ok

BBBrrngr: but what happened tho

AS-Tracy: I mean it, B, because it's not my secret and i really shouldn't say

BBBrrngr: I won't tell

BBBrrngr: i swear

BBBrrngr: on my parents even

Alan pauses again. This is the sort of statement that can only really be appreciated by the children of dead parents, and this is another unfortunate quality he and Brandon have in common. The sincerity of the promise is what tips him over the edge.

AS-Tracy: my brother got his girlfriend pregnant

BBBrrngr: o SHIT

Alan deliberatly doesn't say which brother and of course nobody even knowsthat Gordon has a girlfriend, so it's not like any identifiable details have slipped into this disclosure—but he still feels an immediate twist of guilt in his stomach and wishes he could take it back. It's not that he doesn't trust Brandon, it's just that it's really a private matter that should've stayed within the family. Especially when he hears his brother groan softly and shift on the lounge chair behind him, and it suddenly feels like he's been caught in the act.

AS-Tracy: g2g talk later

He palms the screen of the comm off and guiltily slips it back into his pocket before Brandon can reply, and pulls his feet up out of the pool as he turns to get a better look at Gordon. Alan's eyes have adjusted to the relative darkness by now, but the pale blue light glimmering through the poolwater's surface isn't particularly kind to his brother It catches the wrong angles of his face, makes him look gaunt and ghastly, and gives his complexion a faintly greenish cast that prompts Alan to ask, a little nervously, "Are you gonna puke some more?"

Gordon coughs, clearing his throat, and shakes his head. "No. M'done."

That's reassuring, at least. "How're you feeling?"

Gordon just shakes his head and doesn't answer. He's closed his eyes again, breathing still deep and deliberate and steady, and Alan hopes that the fresh air is doing him some good. He doesn't know what to say, and John had been explicit in his warning not to talk about it, so the dozens of questions lining up in his brain just keep piling up against each other, with nowhere to go. He just sits and watches Gordon, waiting to see if he's going to respond.

"I fucked up," he says, at length, a plain and simple statement of fact, somehow sadder and more despondent than any of his usual embellishment could make it.

Alan's answer is immediate and automatic— "It'll be okay."

It's trite and kind of obvious and maybe not even actually true, but it's still the only thing Alan can think to tell him, and whether it's true or not, he says it like he means it, and hopes that'll count for something.

It doesn't seem to make a dent in the aura of despair that radiates off his brother. Gordon just shakes his head again, and he sounds exhausted when he summons his voice up to respond, "I dunno, Al. I really, really fucked up."

The pain in his voice is enough to make Alan wince, and enough that he gets up from the edge of the pool, clambers to his feet, and sits back down on the chaise part of the lounge chair, nudging Gordon's leg, hoping to offer support by proximity, if words seem to insist on failing him.

Gordon obligingly and automatically bends one of his knees upward to make room for his little brother, though otherwise he remains bonelessly sprawled against the canvas, head tipped back and eyes falling closed again as he exhales a long, weary sigh. Silence falls between them again, stretching out over a long few minutes. The wind trailing along over their little patch of the Pacific in the wake of the storm laps gently at the surface of the pool water, a tiny echo of the same waves that tear up against the island's distant, craggy shore. The light from the pool isn't much, but it's bright enough that Alan's view of the edge of the island is truncated, and the world beyond the far end of the pool deck seems to fall away into inky darkness, as though they're drifting in some indifferent void.

He's wondering if he should say something and if so what it should be, when Gordon's knee tilts and knocks against his shoulder. It's a thoughtless point of connection that makes Alan feel a weirdly disconnected pang of sympathy. When Gordon's really upset, he tends to seek out physical contact. The fact that his knee is pressed insistently against Alan's shoulder is as sure a sign as any that he's looking to be consoled about something, even though when Alan glances up at him, it's immediately apparent that he's fallen asleep. The sounds of the wind and the sea married to the rigours of emotional and physical exhaustion seem to have done their work. One of his hands rests loosely atop his stomach, and the other dangles limply off the side of the chair. He's already snoring audibly and dead to the world, and after the night he's had, he probably deserves to be.

Alan watches him for a few minutes. John said not to talk about it, and so he hasn't, but there's nothing to stop him from wondering about the current state of things. Scott's taken off after what sounds like it was a fairly dire fight with Gordon. John's off dealing with whatever needs dealing with, as far as the logistics of the whole mess are concerned. Alan doesn't know where Virgil is, but he probably wouldn't be much help anyway. Even if he's not supposed to, Alan wishes he could talk to Gordon, because he has so much to ask about how things wound up this way, and what's going to happen next.

He's pulled his comm back out of his pocket without even thinking about it, and the blue glow radiating from the palm of his hand seems like the brightest thing in the world, as he realizes he's staring down at the screen. Three unread messages wait for him.

BBBrrngr: ok ttyl.

And separated by a timestamp of about ten minutes:

BBBrrngr: btw i'm def not gonna tell anybody but if u wanna talk to me about stuff anytime just hmu

BBBrrngr: maddy and frank fight a lot and and it sucks but you always let me whine about their BS so u kno i get it. so just say so if you wanna talk.

This is the sort of thing that Brandon says sometimes, which precipitates a sort of funny and unidentifiable warm feeling in Alan's chest, which would be helpful to be able to discuss with one of his brothers, not that they've made themselves readily available lately. Its existence wears the edge off some of the guilt, such that Alan manages not to glance at Gordon again as he starts typing.

AS-Tracy: thanks man

BBBrrngr: u know it bro

BBBrrngr: u ok?

AS-Tracy: by comparison, yeah.

BBBrrngr: ur brother's p messed up?

Messed up is putting it mildly.

AS-Tracy: yeah.

BBBrrngr: poor guy. its gonna be ok though right?

AS-Tracy: gonna have to be, one way or another. I don't know what they're gonna do. and we're probably gonna be off for like a week or whatever while they figure it out. John doesn't think we can work around this. we're already down by one and we're swamped.

BBBrrngr: damn

AS-Tracy: yeah

BBBrrngr: well. u guys are always like saving the world and stuff

BBBrrngr: one of u can take a break and have a baby

BBBrrngr: like a normal person

BBBrrngr: that could be cool

BBBrrngr: ur gonna be an uncle! :D

AS-Tracy: haha, maybe. BIG maybe. don't know yet.

BBBrrngr: is it weird if i kinda hope so tho? like is it okay if i do?

AS-Tracy: I mean as long as you don't tell anybody I guess it's fine. a little weird, maybe. i don't even really know how I feel. I definitely don't know how THEY feel.

BBBrrngr: well i think more family is always a good thing

Alan can't help but grin at that, and that funny little warm feeling happens again. And something inside him comes unbound, quite suddenly. As the wind picks up, it picks up caution along with it, and Alan plunges headfirst into all the things he hadn't been able to say to his brother.

AS-Tracy: okay well

AS-Tracy: double don't tell anybody

AS-Tracy: but maybe I kinda think it would be pretty cool too

BBBrrngr: lol good!

AS-Tracy: and like I wanna be excited but I can't

AS-Tracy: or I can't so that anybody else knows about it

AS-Tracy: because it's still bad news right now

AS-Tracy: Scott's all mad and John's all super serious and I don't even know if virgil or my grandma even KNOW yet.

AS-Tracy: and gordon's just COMPLETELY wrecked

AS-Tracy: because right now this still messes everything up in a bad way

AS-Tracy: but I dunno, maybe it could mess everything up in a good way? you know?

AS-Tracy: like I remember how it was when my dad died. it was all so awful, but everything changed, and then everything was different and it was hard and sad and scary, but we were okay in the end. and we're still here now.

AS-Tracy: that was the worst thing that ever happened, except for maybe my mom dying, but I don't really remember how things were back then

AS-Tracy: but this isn't like that

AS-Tracy: it's what you said, it's just more family

BBBrrngr: yeah!

AS-Tracy: we've lost a lot of family. we've never done the other thing.

AS-Tracy: but I want to get to the part where we get to be happy about that!

AS-Tracy: because it's gonna be a new person! a whole entire new person!

AS-Tracy: by christmas we'll just have somebody new in our family!

BBBrrngr: christmas baby!

AS-Tracy: and I wish my dad could be here

AS-Tracy: this would be going so much better if my dad was still here

AS-Tracy: he wouldn't be mad. i bet anything he wouldn't be mad, he'd be so happy

AS-Tracy: and gordon! he'd be so good at having a kid, he'd be such a good dad!

AS-Tracy: and i'd be a cool uncle

BBBrrngr: lol this kid is gonna have so many uncles

AS-Tracy: SO MANY

AS-Tracy: I would be SUCH a cool uncle

AS-Tracy: oh man now I really want them to have a baby

AS-Tracy: everyone else is busy being really really stupid

AS-Tracy: but i just want to be excited about the baby.

AS-Tracy: the maybe baby

BBBrrngr: the probaby ;)

AS-Tracy: hahaha. aww man I wish gordie could talk to you. he's a sucker for stuipd puns. I bet it would make him feel better.

BBBrrngr: u can have that one for free no charge

AS-Tracy: i'll save it for later. I dunno if he'd wanna hear it right now.

BBBrrngr: well i was just trying to cheer u up

AS-Tracy: you did. thanks :)

BBBrrngr: u got it ;)

Alan's not the one who needed looking after or cheering up, so he feels a twinge of guilt at the thought that Brandon's put in a deliberate effort to make him feel better about something he shouldn't even have known about in the first place. Alan's supposed to be taking care of Gordon, not gossiping about his private life. Even if Brandon means well, and even if Alan trusts him not to tell anyone—it feels a little weird to have allowed him this close to something so personal. It's probably time to disengage.

AS-Tracy: I should go look after my brother. he fell asleep on the pooldeck and I should probably make him go to bed.

BBBrrngr: oh ya

BBBrrngr: tell him itll be okay

AS-Tracy: I will

BBBrrngr: gl al :)

AS-Tracy: see ya, b :)


	44. interlude: sunshine

It wasn't the thunder that woke her, but the departing Thunderbird, and so Grandma Tracy has already been lying awake in bed for a couple drowsy hours, when someone knocks softly on her bedroom door.

The news is delivered in a hushed whisper and her reaction is awaited with wide eyes and bated breath. But this latest drama, for as much as it's shocked and rattled the rest of the family, barely even registers as a tremor on their grandmother's Richter scale. She doesn't even bother to get dressed properly, slipping into her housecoat and stepping into a pair of bunny slippers and pads out of her bedroom in search of more information.

According to Alan, who'd been the one to wake her and to break the news about Gordon and Lady Penelope, attempts to get his brother back into the house and into bed had been met with resistance, an inertia of misery and latent inebriation. She'd assured him that she would take care of it, offered him a solid "maybe" when he'd casually slipped in a request go to Seoul for his birthday, and made her way down to the villa proper.

According to John, who she'd found at his father's desk, back in full uniform and in the midst of officially informing the relevant authorities about the indefinite extension of IR's current hiatus, _Scott_ should be the one doing this, but Scott's taken off in TB1, and is busy being an irresponsible, useless, stupid _idiot_ and John doesn't even actually _want_ his help anyway. She'd told him to try and cut his big brother just a little bit of slack, considering the circumstances, and then headed downstairs.

According to Virgil, who she'd found hunched over a gallon of melting Rocky Road in the kitchen on her way out to the pooldeck, life is pointless and love isn't real and why exactly do any of them even bother with _anything_ anyway, when all their relationships are so obviously doomed to inevitable crushing failure? She'd patted him on the shoulder and offered him a bottle of fudge sauce from the fridge and rainbow sprinkles from the cupboard, and then made her way outside.

The pooldeck is no place to sleep, and wouldn't be even if it wasn't occasionally the launch site for a Thunderbird, but she finds the fourth of her grandsons curled up there anyway. Eastward, the first light of the sun begins to colour a South Pacific sky still tattered by the remnants of disintegrated storm clouds. And beneath the oncoming dawn, Gordon sleeps, but it must be because he's exhausted, because he can't possibly be comfortable. Alan's done his best with what he has to work with, and he's left a colourful linen beach blanket draped over his brother, and a bottle of water tucked in the crook of his elbow, but it's still a shame that Gordon didn't make it at least as far as a couch in the lounge, if his bedroom was too tall an order.

Grandma sits down at the edge of the pool chair next to him, and reaches out to gently shake his shoulder.

Immediately in response to her touch, he curls up even tighter, fingers clasping the edge of the blanket to pull it up over his face as he mumbles, "G' _way_ , Alan. Lemme _alone_."

"Not Alan," Grandma corrects, pulling the blanket back down. "And not a a chance, kiddo."

Alan's presence wouldn't have been enough to drag Gordon back into verticality, but for his grandmother he blinks open bleary brown eyes and pushes himself upright, dazed and weary. Gordon wears bedhead a bit better than any of his brothers, but otherwise, especially by the light of morning, he looks absolutely terrible. Grandma Tracy's heart aches a little at the sight of him.

"Oh, sunshine. Honey, c'mere," she murmurs as he crumples towards her with a whimper, burying his face against her shoulder and collapsing bodily into the hug he's probably needed all night, but almost certainly hasn't gotten. Not if John and Alan have been the ones looking after him, at least. There's an enormous sniffle from the region of her shoulder and Grandma Tracy sighs, reaching up to rub a comforting hand down her grandson's back. Emotion shudders out of him as she holds him a little tighter. "It'll be okay, baby," she whispers, gentle but certain. "I've been here with your father, and I've been here with your brother, and it all worked out in the end."

Gordon's response is directed squarely into the plush fabric of her housecoat, muffled and inaudible, and she chuckles to herself and pats the top of his head. "Didn't catch that one, hon."

He turns his face and repeats himself, ferocity cutting through the break in his voice, "I fucking _hate_ my fucking _brother_."

In her fifteen years spent raising her boys, their grandmother has heard every possible variation of this statement, from and about every one of them, and knows better than to believe it. "You don't, sweetheart, but I understand if you're angry at him." Grandma Tracy sighs, and gives her grandson a kiss on the forehead, before loosening her hold and letting him go, to sit up and rub at his eyes. She reaches for his free hand and gives his fingers a squeeze. "I guess he gave you a hard time," she hazards, and knows it for an understatement that'll get a rise out of Gordon, especially if Scott's been as much trouble as she suspects.

"He was a _jackass_!" The flare of fire is actually a good sign, stirring Gordon up out of misery and into righteous fury. His eyes are damp and rimmed with red and shadowed from what must've been a lousy sleep, but they still flash in the light of the rising sun, and the way his jaw sets is just exactly the same as his father's always used to. Exactly the same way Scott's still does. "I _know_ I fucked up, and I _knew_ he'd give me hell, but then he— _god_ , what he _said_ …a-and I just…"

His voice fails him with a broken little breath and the hand she'd clasped suddenly pulls away as his arms wrap around, lock tight across his stomach, and his shoulders fall, and his head bows. There's an essential physicality to Gordon's emotions that makes him transparently easy to read; his body language unfailingly telegraphs big, unsubtle feelings that bubble up from the depths and swallow him whole.

As she shushes him gently and slips a comforting arm around his shoulders again, Grandma Tracy can't help wondering just exactly how much damage Scott's actually done, and whether or not he knows it. Her rendition of what's happened isn't even second, but third-hand, and the account she's gotten from Alan was tremendously light on the details, for something that's completely altered his brother's life in the span of only twelve hours. She's got the general play-by-play of the night's events, but nothing like a close accounting of the uglier specifics.

"What did Scott say?"

Gordon sniffs loudly, and rubs his eyes again, coughing and clearing his throat. "A buncha shit," he answers, sullen and petulant at the mere mention of his brother—but he closes his eyes, apparently casting his memory back through a thorough accounting of what Scott had to say. Opening them again after a few moments and a deep breath, he stares numbly out at the very first rays of sunlight glittering off the surface of the pool, and starts to recite a damning litany—

"He told me she won't want this to continue. He said I did this _to_ her—th-that I ruined her whole life. He said _I_ can't handle this, and that _she_ wouldn't…w-won't _want_ to. With…with me. He says she won't want this with _me_."

Grandma Tracy winces and rubs a hand across Gordon's shoulders, even as his eyes squeeze closed and he leans against her again, where she sits patiently beside him. "And right around then is when I expect you tried to brain him with a bottle of Jim Beam?"

Gordon coughs again. "Maker's Mark," he corrects feebly, and shakes his head. "Dad's. I was aiming at the floor."

Grandma can't help a sad little smile at that. "Well, I'm sure your father would've appreciated your restraint in not bouncing a bottle of bourbon off the inch-thick skull of his firstborn. _Especially_ because whatever Scott said doesn't matter."

There's that stubborn set of his jaw again, sunlight flashing fire from the warmth of dark brown eyes as her grandson stares stubbornly out over the pool, refusing to look at her when he answers, "He still said it."

By the sounds of things, Scott's going to need to be handled separately, and at a later date. But he's not who's important right now, and it's time to knock Gordon back on track, back towards what matters.

"Mmhm. And what did _she_ say?"

It's impossible not to wonder how this news must've landed. For as much as Grandma likes Lady Penelope—and she _does_ like Penelope, not in the least because in light of the circumstances, one day she may have her for a daughter-in-law—there's an ironclad composure to her ladyship that seems as though it couldn't possibly coexist with the messy reality of an unexpected pregnancy.

Gordon doesn't answer immediately, still staring fixedly out across the water. When he finally does, he seems genuinely brokenhearted, and it sounds almost like an admission of guilt when he answers, "She…she cried a lot. Like, a _lot_. I've _never_ seen her cry before."

Well. That answers that. Getting tears from Penelope must be like getting blood from a stone. Getting tears from Gordon is as easy as bringing home the wrong kind of peanut butter. Grandma reaches over to erase the passage of an errant and mildly ironic teardrop from her grandson's cheek, gently brushing it away with the pad of her thumb. "It's a pretty emotional kind of a thing, kiddo. Throws a girl clean off her game. It's probably too early to read too much into it. Did you two get much of a chance to talk?"

He shifts beside her, uncomfortable and guilty. "Not really. She was exhausted and I had to get back for midnight. She told me I should go home and break the news. I didn't want to argue with her." There's a wry twist of his expression, something almost self-recriminating in his voice as he adds, "We already had a fight about going to the hospital, I wasn't gonna press my luck. She kicked my ass the first time, and that was the fight I _won_."

Grandma nods sagely. "She might just need some space. It's a lot to process."

Gordon seems unconvinced by the attempt at reassurance. He swallows and his voice softens and grows slightly husky as he goes on, "She said she was sorry."

"Well, I imagine the both of you are."

Now he shakes his head, adamant. "She doesn't need to be sorry for _my_ fuckup."

At this Grandma sighs to herself, and gently disagrees, "Takes two to tango, kiddo. Horizontally or otherwise. And if you'll pardon me borrowing your choice of language—it's not really _your_ usual flavour of fuckup. Don't be too hard on yourself."

That's not going to stop him, but it's her job to offer the reminder, even if he thinks it's just a platitude. Gordon's always going to be hard on himself, regardless of what anyone says or does, and he's stubborn as he insists, "I shouldn't have let this happen."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But it doesn't matter, sweetheart, because it _has_ happened. And it might've happened anyway, even if you'd both done everything right. How was she when you left? Calmed down?"

"I guess. Maybe more tired than calm." Gordon shakes his head to himself, dejected. "Never seen her that tired, either."

"It's a tiring sort of state to me in. How pregnant is she?"

It's a trick she remembers teaching to John, when it comes to handling his little brother when he gets upset. Diverting Gordon from feelings to facts will usually help calm him down, and it works as well now as it did when he was six. Still, there's a tacit implication in the question that makes him tense beside her, sitting up a little straighter and stammering out a halting and embarrassed non-answer to what should've been a straightforward question, " _Uh_. W-well. We've only, y'know, uh…gotten together…one actual time. Before, um. Before…this."

Valentine's Day, then. Grandma politely clears her throat, and hazards, "…three weeks?"

It takes a lot to embarrass Gordon, but apparently even sidelong discussion of the night he got his girlfriend pregnant will bring red rising to his cheeks and leave him somewhat tongue-tied. "So, um. More like…um…s-six? Six-ish?"

Conversation pauses between them as her grandson allows her a moment to do the math. Grandma Tracy does the math, and then does the math a second time, just to be sure. Then silence stacks up for a full minute while she processes the idea, before she begins, delicately, "Now, I know I've always told you boys about how I'd rather you _didn't_ get me anything for my birthday—"

Gordon interrupts, hastily attempting to break the association between her birthday and what happened between him and Penelope the night thereof. " _Technically_ it wasn't your birthday, anymore. Uh. By that point."

Grandma laughs softly, hopes that the mood might start to lighten along with the sky. "Oh, _technically_. You've always been so partial to 'technically'. _Technically_ , Alan was the one who broke the window. _Technically_ , it was Virgil's idea. _Technically_ , John was supposed to be watching the three of you. I've heard a whole lot of ' _technically_ ' over the course of your lifetime, Gordon."

Despite the subject matter, one thing that's always been true about Gordon is his tendency to absorb and reflect the moods of the people around him. From what his grandmother can gather, so far everyone else has handled him a little too roughly for what he's going through. It serious, to be sure, but it's far from the end of the world, and Gordon deserves a little sweetness and light, a little levity to take the edge off everything he's facing. And even here and now, she manages to tease him into just the barest beginning of a self-recriminating little grin. " _Technically_ has saved my stupid ass _so many times_ , Grandma." As quick as it appeared, the little flash of a smile falters and fades. "Just…not this one, I guess."

"Well, I don't think I have to tell you that technically it only _takes_ one time, Gordon."

There's another one of those tremendous, tremulous sighs. "I know."

Grandma Tracy elbows her grandson lightly in the ribs, before he can slide too much further back into despair, and cracks another little joke, "I suppose you pulled out of small town Kansas a touch too early for 'abstinence only' to really sink in." She pauses and then grins a wicked little grin of her own. "No pun intended."

It takes a moment for this to land, but when it does—

" _Grandma_!"

Grandma scoffs, unrepentant, and in actual fact quite pleased with herself. "Oh, what? I'm eighty years old, I'll say what I like."

"At _my_ expense? At a time like this? When _Scott_ exists?"

The indignant outrage is at least partially just bluster, and Grandma doesn't miss a beat as she fires right back, determined to drive home her point, " _Scott_ only exists because thirty-two years ago, your father found himself in the same situation you're in right now. Your big brother was as much an accident as what happened with him in high school, and Gordon, no matter what he said to you about that—it all worked out okay in the end."

Apparently Gordon's still a little too sore at his big brother to let this pass unremarked upon. and he scowls, before blackly commenting, "Scott wasn't an accident, Scott was a _mistake_."

This is pure pain and spite talking, and Grandma Tracy knows Gordon too well to let him get away with it. "Oh, _well_ now. There are a lot of people still alive in the world right now who'd disagree with _that_." Driving this point home apparently requires emphasis a little sharper than her elbow in his ribs, and so Grandma very deliberately pokes her grandson in the cheek with the tip of her finger. "And we both know you're one of 'em, kiddo."

Apparently this isn't something Gordon wants to be reminded of, because the statement is met with an uncomfortable, uncharacteristic silence. Grandma Tracy sighs and reaches out to take his hand again. "Accidents happen, Gordon. All kinds of accidents, for all kinds of reasons. Bad luck. Bad timing. Incompetence. Run of the mill boneheaded _fuckups_. It doesn't matter which exactly it was: shit happens. You and your brothers should know that better than just about anybody. I know you feel awful about this, and I'm not trying to say you're wrong to be upset; it can be an upsetting sort of thing. But it's also just…it's _life_. And in the end, one way or another, everything always works out. I _promise_ , baby. It's all going to be okay."

That her take on the situation could be so straightforward and simple and optimistic seems to run contrary to what Gordon might've expected, because he shakes his head, protesting, "…what'm I supposed to _do_ , though?"

Grandma shrugs, unconcerned. "What I already know you will—whatever she needs you to. Whatever you'd do for the girl you love. I've seen you move mountains for the sake of complete strangers, Gordie. There's no way in the world you'd fail her now. Don't be scared, sunshine. You already know how to do what's right."

"…really?"

"Really," she promises firmly, squeezing his fingers. "But if you want a straighter answer than that, then what you're going to do _now_ is head inside and take a shower. Then you're going to get yourself dressed. And _then_ I'm going to fly you back to Auckland my own damn self, because you've done what you came here to do, and right now no one needs you more than _she_ does, even if she doesn't know it."

For the first time since she came out to find him, she finally manages to tease something like an affirmative response out of her grandson, a slow, hopeful nod, and then his voice steals back into him, belying just how much he loves her as it escapes him, running away with what he really feels.

"I wanna go back. I _hated_ leaving her all alone. I miss her—I _miss her_. _So_ much. It's only been like eight hours, and I miss her like _breathing_. I don't know how the hell we've been doing this since _January_ , because all I ever do these days is wish I was with her and it's _killing me_. It used to be all I'd ever do was eat and sleep and work and fly—and _now_ all I do is just miss her. And everything _else_ is just noise."

"Oh, honey," Grandma murmurs, sympathetic. "That's a hard way to have to love someone."

This gets a broken little groan of agreement, a little sound of the pent up anguish and longing that probably no one else has heard from him yet. It's like a dam's been broken, and emotions flood out of him like a river that's come unbound. "I love her like _crazy_ , Grandma. I didn't think I even _could_ love her any more than I already did—but _then_ she said she loves me back. I never knew how that would feel, and _now_ I just, I…I don't _want_ anything else. _Nothing_ else, _ever_. I don't care about the rest of it. Scott can throw me out of the family if he wants, I don't even—"

Grandma cuts in sharply, "Scott _can't_ throw you out of the family, _actually_. The only thing Scott can throw is a _tantrum_ and it seems like he's already done that. Under absolutely no circumstances would that ever, _ever_ happen, Gordon. Scott wouldn't do that to you; he couldn't even if he actually wanted to. And if he _said_ he wanted to, then there's gonna be _hell_ to pay."

"He didn't _exactly_ , but—" Gordon pauses and swallows. He's still vehement, but his voice has gotten hushed as he goes on, like he's telling her something terrible, "—but what if I kinda want him to?"

That one catches Grandma off guard. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I want…I-I want an excuse not to do _this_ anymore. I don't wanna do anything that keeps us apart. I want her. And I wanted to _stay_ and I only came home because _she_ wanted me to, but…but then it felt different, when I got here. Before I even _saw_ Scott, it felt _wrong_ that I'd come back. What if it's 'cuz I don't want this anymore? IR or the island or my 'bird or what Dad wanted, or-or _any_ of it. I just want _her_ and _us_ , a-and _fuck_ , what if I _want_ a family? I never thought about it. It's just—I never _had_ anything else. A-and _now_ —"

"Gordon," Grandma interrupts, and reaches up to touch his lips with a fingertip, so he falls silent with immediacy. She loves her grandson dearly, but he does tend to babble and lose coherency when he gets emotional. "Sweetheart, you're gonna have to forgive the expression, but I think you don't wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater, here. Or maybe the bathwater out with the baby. It's a _massive_ leap from 'I got my girlfriend pregnant' to 'and therefore I have to leave my family and my home and my job and everything I've ever known'. I think maybe you're panicking a bit. I think you've been severely overworked for the past few weeks and of _course_ this hit you like a freight train. I think you've got a lot of feelings and you haven't had the time or the space to deal with them all. Shh, now. Hush. I've told you what you're going to do now. Do you want to know what I think you should do next?"

She takes her finger away, drops her hand to his shoulder and gives a squeeze to let him know he can answer, but all he does is nod vigorously, eyes brightening again as all those feelings get bottled back up.

"Right. I think after Auckland, you're going to take a few days, or a week, or however long you need, and take yourself home. Not here. _Home_. Go back to Kansas, get some distance. Take Penelope. Or she can meet you there. However it shakes out, the two of you just take some time for yourselves. No one and nothing else. Heaven knows you both need it. Go. Be together. Talk. Work out what happens next, because it's no one else's business but yours and hers. I'll handle your brothers. It's about damn time all five of you had a proper break."

He nods again, but now he's the one to reach for her hand, and to take hold of it like a lifeline. He's calmer now, but there's still an uncertainty to him, and he hesitates before he asks, "…Can you say it's gonna be okay one more time? I'm trying to get it to stick."

Grandma chuckles softly. "It's going to be just fine, Gordon. And I'll even go you one better—I think it could be _wonderful_. I would be lying if I said there wasn't a way I hope this might go, sweetheart. There are things in life worth letting the world roll off your shoulders. I hope you get to find out that this is one of them." Her hand leaves his, but only to come up and pinch his cheek, a hallowed right entitled to all grandmothers. "But for now—chin up, sunshine. One problem at a time. Let's get you back where you belong."

It's shaping up to be a beautiful morning. Once the clouds clear and the sky brightens back to its usual deep cerulean, the only evidence of the storm that's swept across the island will be a few discombobulated palm trees. The island has weathered much worse. And so have her boys. The clouds always clear eventually. If she's taught the five of them one thing, she hopes it might be that.


	45. leather and asphalt

Parker had expected her ladyship to return to London alone, and to all outward appearances, so she does.

It's not until the pair of them are well on their way back towards Creighton-Ward Manor, that Parker discovers that she is not, actually, as alone as she appears. And that she hadn't been when she'd left, either.

Lady Penelope has been with child for the past six weeks now. And though it's too early for there to be any obvious outward signs, with her confession, Parker suddenly finds himself in posession of the singular answer to the dozen questions that had briefly crossed his mind with regard to her ladyship in the past few weeks, but which had ultimately gone unasked.

And now that answer hangs in the air between them, as FAB-1 cruises lazily along the motorway under its own direction, because Parker reflexively set the autodrive as soon as her Ladyship said the word "pregnant".

Of course, in his opinion, no onboard AI of any stripe will ever be a match for the wits and wisdom of a seasoned driver—at least not with the sort of driving he and Penelope do on a regular basis. Parker drives her Ladyship, just as he drove his Lordship before her. He'd trust the job to nothing and no one else. Parker has been the one driving her ladyship since the very day of her birth, was the second person ever to hold her when she first came into the world. To connect the memory of that tiny, squirming little infant to the young woman who sits behind him, now silently carrying a child of her own—

His hands still clench around the steering wheel, frozen in the moment of shock that went along with the news. He's been staring rigidly forward at the road before now, even with the autodrive on, but the memory makes his gaze flicker upward to the rearview mirror, and her pale blue eyes meet his with intensity.

"Parker, please, do say something," she pleads softly. "I can't bear to think that you're angry at me about this."

His hands seize slightly on the wheel at this accusation, and he denies it immediately, "No, m'lady, of course not! Never. Don't ever h'even beginthink it. S'just—bit of a shock, m'lady."

"I'm sorry." She seems to consider this an indictment and her shoulders fall in the same moment that her gaze drops, her hands folding anxiously together in her lap as she repeats herself, murmuring, "I'm so very sorry."

Of course that won't do either. "None of that, your ladyship, please and thank you," Parker tells her firmly, almost stern in his discouragement of any kind of apology for anything at all, and repeats himself for emphasis, "As I said, just a bit of a shock."

There's a sad little shrug in response and then, in a small, sad little voice, "It might've been rather less of a shock if I'd told you rather more of the truth, rather sooner than I had. Oh, Parker…"

To make his earlier case in point, the onboard AI does not know that when her ladyship bursts abruptly into tears, this is an occasion upon which the car must be stopped, with as much urgency as can be considered safe, and pulled smartly to the side of the road. Lady Penelope is already protesting that he shouldn't make such a fuss, but Parker stubbornly disregards this instruction. He slips out of the driver's seat, circling around to open the rear passenger door. Years of long habit can't quite bring him to the point of climbing inside—the back of FAB-1 may as well be a foreign country when her ladyship is in her rightful place as a passenger—though he does take a knee on the asphalt at the side of the road, offering a handkerchief and the limitless depths of his sympathy.

"I'm being frightfully silly," she insists, or tries to, but the tears haven't stopped, and she takes the handkerchief and wipes at her eyes, sniffling. This seems to frustrate her, and she bursts into an objection, a flare of temper in the flood of tears, "I keep crying. I loathe crying; I don't want to cry; I've nothing to cry about."

This is patently untrue, but equally it's exactly the sort of thing her Ladyship tends to believe. Unfortunately. There's something to be said for the quintessential Britishness of the stiff-upper lip, but Penelope has a terrible tendency to bottle her emotions up for the sake of appearances. But there's no one here to save face for, save for Parker. "There now, your ladyship," he says soothingly. "I don't think that's quite the case." His handkerchief already offered, the next thing he has available is his jacket, and as the misty morning chill of the English countryside seeps into the open car door, Parker shrugs this off, and holds it out, draping it around Penelope's slumping shoulders. Heavy black leather doesn't especially suit her, but it's the warmth of it he's concerned with, and she gives him a feeble little nod of gratitude as he tugs it securely closed. "There there, m'lady," he murmurs again, and pats her shoulder. "Perfectly understandable that you'd be upset."

Penelope just shakes her head, somehow still defiant. "I don't want to be upset, I need to be practical. I need to go home. I need to see my doctor. But…oh, but I need…I w-want—" Penelope trails off into sudden, miserable silence, and presses her borrowed handkerchief against her lips, as though stifling a confession before she can accidentally allow it to slip away.

Teasing the truth of her feelings from Lady Penelope is going to require some delicacy. Parker, fortunately, has managed to transfer the skills of a master safecracker over into the (rather more challenging) task of extracting genuine emotions from two generations worth of the Creighton-Ward family.

"…does Master Gordon know?" he probes gently, putting a metaphorical stethoscope up against face of the safe, and starting to listen his way towards the answer. The addition of "master" is one of those delicate touches, a subtle indication that he bears no active hostility towards her absent beau, despite the circumstances. Even Chekov's H'walloping has been tabled for the moment.

Penelope nods, but huddles further into his jacket, and volunteers no additional information. This was expected. In difficult conversations with her ladyship, as with safes, it's best to reduce the variables to a simple binary. Locked or unlocked. Yes or no.

"Did you know before you left?"

She shakes her head at this, still silent, her big blue eyes brimming with unshed tears, welling up in anticipation of whatever will next upset her. Parker continues to tread carefully through the conversation, betraying no personal opinion one way or the other, and merely ascertaining the facts, as he finally asks the most delicate question—

"Do you know what you want to do about this, m'lady? Is there anything I can do?"

The answer, perhaps mercifully, is another silent "no". Parker nods his understanding, and will ask no further questions as to what will ultimately be Penelope's choice. The news is new enough that she probably doesn't yet know.

With the facts thus provided, he can start to change the subject, and carefully offer an observation about the totality of what he's only lately begun to observe, "I h'expect it's all come as quite a shock for all parties h'involved. However, it does begin to explain why you've been rather h'out of sorts of late, m'lady. Most h'especially this last week. What with all the unlikely quietitude and h'ennui. Moping about the manor, brooding in the study, watching the rain and wanting nought but cookies and tea. Most unlike yourself, m'lady."

Penelope sniffles softly and now the handkerchief dabs at her eyes, as the threat of tears momentarily subsides. "I just thought I was lonely," she answers, her voice soft and her tone plaintive.

There's a twinge of Parker's heartstrings at this, and he wonders privately whether he perhaps should've paid her more attention than he had, during the course of the improbably quiet, solitary week-gone-by. He'd assumed that the broad swath cut through her social calendar had meant that she wanted her space. It might've been that the opposite was true. "Well, so you may've been, m'lady, and rightly so. These are hardly mutually h'exclusive states of being."

Despite the superficial celebrity and glamour of the public life she leads, and despite the level of mutual trust required for the work she does on behalf of International Rescue—there's a certain essential solitude to her ladyship. Usually it manifests as an indomitable independence. Only occasionally does one catch glimpses of the real and carefully guarded loneliness it begets. He can only imagine it's so much the worse, to feel such a loneliness while in such a delicate condition. Especially when it's loneliness newly assigned to a person to be lonely for.

Penelope nods. "I did miss him dreadfully. I still do."

This leads Parker rather directly to another question, the answer to which will have a enormous degree of influence on the probability of any potential walloping.

"…did he leave you alone in Auckland, m'lady? All by yourself with that kind of news?"

It's possible just the slightest hint of suspicious contempt creeps into Parker's query, just as a matter of habit. As a matter of reflex, Lady Penelope bristles defensively, straightening up where she sits and allowing an imperious note of warning to ice over her tone. "He did. He left when I told him to; he went home to tell his family what had happened, because I told him he should. That I needed him to do so. And then he came back eight hours later, brought me breakfast and a bottle of iron tablets, put me on a private plane back home, and told me to come away with him for a few days or a week or forever, if I wanted. He went on ahead. Tracy-One lands at the manor this afternoon. He told me to come along whenever I was ready, and Parker, I do mean to."

With this second disclosure, Parker is nowhere near shocked, but he can't help but find himself taken somewhat aback. "…this afternoon, m'lady?" he repeats, for clarification. "Along to where, h'exactly?"

She nods, and the resolution of what she means to do next seems to provide an emotional bolster, an infusion of conviction that stems the tears for good, and calms her further. "Yes. He's asked me to join him in Kansas. Their family has a farmhouse there, I understand, and it's been…politely suggested that Gordon and I take some time for ourselves. We've a great deal to talk about, and we could do with the time and the space and the privacy to talk about it all. Apparently the boys have all been somewhat…rattled…by the news."

"They've been rattled," Parker echoes incredulously, taking sudden, enormous offense on Lady Penelope's behalf. "None of their bleedin'—sorry, m'lady—bloomin' bloody—ah, that is…blasted, rather—blinkin' business to be rattled. And h'even if it were, there's not a man jack of 'em what 'asn't stared face first into the screaming teeth of death and destruction, and not so much's batted an eye! And now this—and they're rattled? Bah!"

He wasn't trying for a laugh, but he gets one anyway, a bright, surprised little sound of amusement as her ladyship's mood shifts. It may be there's a great deal more of this particular emotional mercuriality yet to come in the weeks and months that follow—but for the moment, whatever the reason, Parker's just grateful to see her smile again, even if it's a faint and fleeting thing. "I don't mind if they're rattled. I'm rather rattled myself. And that daft old island in the middle of the ocean, and that whole family so profoundly disconnected from any sort of unexpected happening that doesn't register on the actual Richter scale—no, Parker, I'm afraid I can't hold it against them. This isn't their usual calibre of disaster."

Parker grumbles something to himself about it being no bloody excuse, but grudgingly concedes the point. It does beg another question, and this time he asks it bluntly, "And Master Gordon? As rattled as his brothers?"

She shifts where she sits and shakes her head, and another smile threatens, this one small and subtle and almost rather private, as she answers, with a hint of what might almost be pride, "No. Startled, perhaps, just as much as I was. Shaken, perhaps, rather than rattled. Terribly, tremendously sorry. Maybe more than I am. But…steady, even so. When most I needed someone to hold me together, he was just—he made it very clear that what I felt was all that mattered, and whatever I needed was what he'd do. I don't know if I've ever in my life felt quite so alone and afraid, and then been made to feel quite so safe in spite of it." She pauses and then shyly adds, "He loves me very much. I've been appallingly late in realizing that I love him, too."

Parker doesn't quite know what to say to that. At this point the safe hasn't been cracked so much as had its door blown clear off the hinges, and he's left reeling in the aftermath.

The chill of the asphalt is starting to make his knee ache, where he's knelt at the side of the road to talk to her ladyship, but at his back the sun is mid-morning high in the sky, and the warmth of it pours over his shoulders. It's handily similar to the contrast in emotions he feels—he could never be anything but happy for Penelope, that she's found someone who makes her feel safe and loved and happy, but there's still a creep of something unpleasantly akin to jealousy, up from the base of his spine. Parker is and has been many things to her ladyship over the course of many years. Her entire life, in fact. And while he could never begrudge Peneope even the prospect of someone to belong with—it's impossible not to feel a twinge of foreboding at the thought that she might slip so suddenly away, onward to the next phase of her life, before Parker's even had a chance to grow accustomed to the idea.

His knees can't take much more of this, and in lieu of anything to say, he puts a hand on the side of the doorframe and heaves himself back to his feet, dusting off the palms of his driving gloves and clearing his throat. The natural pause in the conversation seems like sufficient excuse to change the subject and he does so. "Are you feeling quite well, m'lady? You mentioned the doctor, I'll get us back on the road straight h'away if you need to be seen with h'urgency."

Penelope takes a shaky deep breath, steadying herself and nods again, apparently determined to ward off Parker's obvious concern. "I should rather not do anything with urgency. I'm very tired," she admits, and now that the facade has fallen; been chipped and cracked and cried away, she looks it. "It seems so terribly unfair that I should be so terribly tired, when I've really done very little at all."

"We'll go straight home and get you a rest, m'lady," Parker promises immediately, latching on to the prospect of a problem to solve and a service to render. He closes the door and climbs back into the driver's seat, starting the car back up again and pulling smoothly away from the side of the road, as he adds, "I'm sure your usual physican would make a housecall, considering the circumstances."

"Considering the circumstances, I should rather not ask my usual physician to do anything so unusual as making a housecall. The woman charges me six hundred pounds for a phone call. It might just break the bank if I were to request that she leave her office on my behalf. It would certainlybreak the gossip press." Penelope shakes her head, and goes on, decisive now as the rest of her day begins to coalesce into certainty, "No, Parker, I mean to be home only long enough to pack for a week away. I'll leave with Tracy-One as soon as it lands, and see a doctor in some tremendously small town in Kansas, so as to skirt the awareness of anyone who happens to keep tabs on my doctor."

"Oh. Of course, your ladyship."

In the rearview mirror, he can see her shrugging out from beneath his leather jacket as she begins to pull herself together, retrieving an actual compact from her purse and beginning to assess the damage done by such an unlikely spate of crying. "I hate to leave Bertie again so shortly after coming back," she remarks absently. "Would you perhaps want to bring him up to Baltersan? It's been an absolute age since he's been up to ramble around with his brothers and sisters, and Father always loves to have him home."

Parker refrains from commenting that Lord Hugh enjoys Sherbet's company only in as much as he's generally tucked up inside her ladyship's purse upon arrival. "Whatever you like, m'lady." His gaze flickers to the rearview mirror, and though the warning he offers is real, he keeps his tone mild, "Though his lordship will wonder h'why you've sent just the mutt up. And he'll ask where you've gone all h'alone, if I'm driving the dog and not his daughter."

Penelope shrugs, less concerned than Parker is about her father's potential questions. "I see no reason why he mightn't be told that I've gone away for a personal vacation. It's the truth, after all. Of course, you mustn't tell him anything about…ah…my condition."

Parker nods slowly, wondering if her ladyship recognizes the immense test of divided loyalties it will represent, if Hugh decides to press for an honest answer. Parker's not sure he could successfully get even the whitest of lies past his lordship. He's not entirely certain he'd want to. "Naturally not, your ladyship."

"If he's to be told—that is, if there's to be anything to tell him—then it really must come from me. I don't imagine he'd handle it well, if he came by the news in an indirect fashion."

"I h'imagine not."

"You know how Father is."

"I do, m'lady."

"So I really must insist that you don't tell him, Parker. Please."

Lady Penelope is unfailingly polite in her dealings with Parker. To the outside observer she seems bossy, domineering—but it's the nature of their relationship, and neither would quite no what to do with its subtle architecture. Still, the please is what ensures that Parker will keep the secret he's been told. Whether his lordship finds out by other means is out of Parker's hands almost entirely, but on Penelope's request, he'll feign ignorance as far as he can. Perhaps for his lordship's sake, as much as his lady's. "I shan't, m'lady."

"Thank you, Parker."

"Of course, your ladyship."


	46. denim and velvet

Kansas never changes.

Or at least, it never changes on a scale or scope that Gordon can perceive. Whenever he comes home, whether it's been months or years since whatever sojourn happened last—Kansas always seems like it's been carved out and set apart, divorced from the rest of the world's inexorable march forward, and left exactly the way he remembers it. The aureate stretch of the prairies still extends in all directions. Distant tractors still roam implacably across quilting circle patches of farmland. The farmhouse stands exactly as it has for the course of its hundred year lifespan, up on the crest of a low hill, off the side of a highway that connects the two nearest towns, still approximately as tiny as they were twelve years ago. It's home in a way that Tracy Island isn't, because Tracy Island will always seem new by comparison; will always represent the phase of his family's life that started attaching his family's name to big, important things—like industries and airplanes and islands—instead of just his family, and the family farm.

There's a local airstrip about six miles from the farmhouse, and this is where Tracy-One will land. The little strip of pavement in the middle of the prairie usually sees far less sophisticated aircraft than his family's private jet—mostly an aging fleet of cropdusters, stubbornly maintained and operated their owners, and a few light aircraft belonging to hobbyist pilots in the surrounding county, all housed in a ramshackle little hangar off to the side—but it's perfectly serviceable and more convenient than landing at the nearest airport, which is fully a three hour drive from the farmhouse. It's Tracy-One he waits for now, sitting perched on the hood of Grandpa Tracy's old truck, parked on the grass alongside the airstrip.

It's coming up on a quarter past eleven in the morning, Central Standard Time. It's the seventh of March, and functionally spring in Kansas. There's still a chill in the air and mist on the ground in the mornings, but this burns off by ten AM. Once the sun gets high enough in the sky, it's warm enough to forego a jacket, and so Gordon's hoodie lies abandoned across the bench seat of the truck, and he's dressed soberly down in dark denim and rolled up chambray shirt-sleeves, pale blue to match a sky strewn with altostratus clouds. It's the same sky that taught him just how many kinds of clouds there could be. He watches them now with the sort of mildly disconnected bemusement that goes along with extreme jet lag, and keeps forgetting that he's meant to be watching for a plane, and not trying to pick shapes out of the clouds. Even if he thinks he might see a bunny.

Contributing to the overall feel of hazy timelessness is the fact that Gordon has lately crossed too many timezones to actually keep account of, and the last forty-eight hours have been a muddled blur of occasionally supersonic travel in both easterly and westerly directions, such that local time has lost all meaning, and the only useful remaining metric is his own internal clock.

But he's here. And soon, Penelope will be too. And hopefully this time they'll get to be together for long enough to sync up properly. Hopefully they'll have long enough to figure everything out.

His comm buzzes lightly on the hood of the truck next to him, and Gordon reflexively reaches over to answer it, pausing for only a moment to make sure it's someone he actually wants to talk to. Admittedly there's only one person he absolutely _doesn't_ want to talk to at the moment, add the odds of _him_ calling are slim—but Gordon still screens the call, just to be safe.

Thankfully, it's just John.

"Jaybird," he greets his big brother, as John appears in washed out hologram beneath the brightness of the morning sun, faded like an old photo kept from its place in the album, but still a welcome sight. "Hiya."

John nods his acknowledgment and returns the greeting, perfunctory, "Hi, Gordon. I've got T-1 on approach, touchdown in about five minutes."

"Thanks, John." A patch of shade from the edge of the hangar falls across the far side of the hood, and Gordon pushes his comm into the shadow, and squints to confirm what he's seeing. John's in his blues, but that's not what's notable. "…You went home?" he asks, surprised, but certain that he can detect a telltale absence of gravity in the way his brother carries himself. There's an easiness to John in zero-g, once one knows to look for it. It's been enough years by now that deep down everyone knows that home for John isn't the island, nor even Kansas, but the space station into which he pours his heart and soul, the place he's set apart for himself and his partner, up in the stars.

"Well, so did you." John shrugs. "Seems to be the way we're handling this. Virgil's still on the island. Scott's on his way back. Kayo's in the wind again. Alan came up with me, he's helping me with some minor maintenance and a few major upgrades, since we're not running ops. Figured we might as well."

"Oh. Uh." Gordon stifles a twinge of guilt about the reason they're not running ops. John doesn't seem bothered, but then, that's a significant component of John's job. It might just be he's happy to be back aboard TB5, whatever the excuse. Even if that excuse is Gordon completely destabilizing the rest of the family and threatening the bedrock of IR's ability to operate in the world at large. "Yeah. Right—might as well get something done, I guess. While we're, uh. While we're taking a break."

"It might stop, but it never ends," John answers sagely, quoting the sort of proverbial wisdom he occasionally distributes from on high, before changing gears, and making what he probably hopes is an encouraging observation, "You're looking better. Did you get some sleep?"

What sleep Gordon's gotten has been piecemeal, snatched in fits and spurts in the course of the trip to the other side of the world. He's had an aggregate total of maybe six hours, but not all at once. Still, it's made a strangely refreshing change from tumbling out of a Thunderbird and collapsing directly into bed for the sole purpose of being legally eligible to fly again as soon as possible. He rubs at the back of his neck and reflects that he feels better rested than he has any right to, under the circumstances. Something about the freshness of the air, maybe. "Some, yeah."

"That's good. Grandma took off into the wild blue yonder before she let me in on what she planned on doing with you. This is a good option. You deserve the rest."

The switch from John's usual brusqueness into obvious sympathy exacerbates rather than alleviates Gordon's guilt, and he awkwardly deflects the sentiment. "Yeah, well. We all kinda do. It's been a hell of a month."

John chuckles sardonically at that. "For some of us more than others. How's Kansas?"

Gordon shrugs. "So far, so good."

"House still standing?"

John asks this question as though he doesn't actively keep tabs on the family farm, just the same as he keeps tabs on everywhere else their family could conceivably call home. He gets quietly edgy during tornado season, but so far a century's worth of good luck has held, but Gordon indulges him anyway, "It was as of half an hour ago."

"Good. Try and keep it that way."

"Yeah, yeah." Gordon also isn't entirely sure what exactly John thinks he could get up to in the course of a few days off that would level the closest thing their family has to an ancestral home—but he feels strangely flattered by the warning. "It's kinda weird, I guess. I don't know if I've ever really been here by myself before. Usually we're all here together for some family thing. Thanksgiving after Dad. Last couple Christmases. But the place seems empty with just me."

In hologram John's gaze flits upwards, towards something Gordon can't see. "Won't be just you, in about three more minutes."

At this Gordon realizes that he's stopped paying attention to the sky almost entirely, turned around to sit cross-legged on the hood of the truck, facing the comm and John's hologram. Guiltily he glances upwards, though the sky is still clear of oncoming aircraft and still populated exclusively by fluffy white clouds. "…Right."

" _Right_ ," John continues, all bright agreement, growing brusque again as he departs the shallow waters of inane smalltalk, and returns to the more pressing details of the current state of affairs, "I've got our primary comm network isolated and looped out of the overhaul, so you can call me or Tracy Island if you need to, but I won't have major systems available if you need, like, a satellite hacked. I can't hack any satellites. Five's going to be out of commission for at least three days if I want to do a broad hardware update. I have about sixty new modules to install."

This sounds to Gordon like a hell of a lot of work that Alan's been conned into doing, but there's no mistaking the excitement in John's tone, and Gordon's happy that someone's managed to find a silver lining in the middle of this whole mess. "Sounds like telecomm Christmas."

"Basically."

"I'll try not to need you to hack any satellites. No promises on Penny's account, though."

"Oh, she's already been warned."

Gordon perks up a little at this. "You called her?"

John nods. "Let her know you were waiting on the runway. Well," he pauses, and both hands come up to apply a layer of light sarcasm, as his fingertips flick airquotes around the word, "the ' _runway_ ', such as it is. I told her to expect a bit of a bumpy touchdown. I don't think that thing's seen fresh pavement in a decade or so." John's expression grows momentarily distant, thoughtful. "I should make that happen," he comments absently to himself, and one of his hands drifts upward and to the left as he makes a digital note of it.

Sudden anxiety betrays him, and Gordon can't help but press the point, hoping for a head's up on what he has to expect, once Tracy-One hits the tarmac. "Right, yeah. But Penny, though? She seem okay?"

John shrugs. "Fine from what I can tell. Two more minutes and you can ask her yourself."

Gordon nods, mildly abashed. "Right. Okay."

"I mean, a two minute warning on what _I_ can read of Penelope's perpetually guarded emotional state isn't going to do you a hell of a lot of practical good, Gordon. Just saying."

This isn't phrased like a rebuke, and actually comes through tinted with lightly self-recriminating amusement on John's part, but somehow Gordon still comes away feeling somewhat scolded. "Yeah. Yeah, right. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry." This time there's a distinct tone of reprimand, immediately softened by a sigh and then an apologetic explanation, "Sorry. I just mean that you know her better than I do, and so you'll know soon enough. I just don't think I can tell you anything helpful about whatever she might be feeling. She's hard for me to get a read on right now."

Gordon nods, thinking wryly back to the woman he'd followed through Mercy General hospital, and how she'd been functionally a stranger to him on both sides of the news. "I know. She does that."

"And you _know_ that she does that, and so therefore you've already got one up on me. It'll be fine, Gordon. All I know is, she's here because she needs you. You won't let her down."

Before Gordon can express his doubts about that, high overhead and distant and _finally_ , Gordon can just begin to hear the telltale sound of a jet engine on approach, and it catches him before he can answer. Even though it's not that long since he last saw her, and even if he's uncharacteristically nervous about the current state of things, he can't help the usual giddy thrill that goes along with the prospect of seeing Penelope again.

John must notice him looking upwards, because he clears his throat and his tone grows brisk again. "Right. I'll leave you there, then. Take care of yourself, Gordon. And of her. Don't rush this. Call me if you need to. TB5's about to get pretty useless, but I'm still here if you need to talk to someone."

It's been an emotional forty-eight hours, admittedly. Even by Gordon's standards. But the casual offer of his brother's support still brings a slight pressure to the back of his throat, and he has to swallow past it as he nods his thanks. "Sure, J. I appreciate it."

"Anytime, Gordon. Good luck. See you around."

John vanishes with a wave and Gordon picks his comm back up, stuffs it in the pocket of his jeans as he glances skyward again. This time he finds what he's been looking for, a glint of silver amongst the clouds. And he climbs down from the hood of the truck, to stand on the tarmac and wait.

* * *

She knows from experience that the landing is the trickiest part of any flight, prop plane or jet, commercial or private, and that this one was supposed to be especially turbulent. Still, in spite of the warning John had called to offer, Tracy-One's pilot brings Tracy-One in for an admirably smooth landing, and Penelope makes a mental note to thank him for it particularly.

Out the window, the world has been divided neatly into two halves, soft gold and pale green below the horizon; brilliant blue and cottony white above. Penelope watches for a few moments as Tracy-One taxis down the runway, such as it is, before sliding the window blind sharply closed, and reaching over to toggle on the comm at her elbow. Just to place one quick, final call before she disembarks.

"John," she says as the line connects, relieved that he's answered, even though she'd last spoken to him not ten minutes ago, when he'd called to politely check in and to warn her about the state of the runway. She'd asked him for a favour, when he'd told her that Gordon was already waiting on the runway, and she doesn't bother to mask the urgency of the question as she asks it again— "How is he?"

"Probably about as worried about you as you are about him." It's hard not to read John's answer as blandly tolerant, almost patronizing, like she's being silly to wonder about the well-being of someone she'll see for herself in only a few more minutes, though he does soften his tone slightly, as he adds some gentle reassurance, "He's okay, Penelope. Gordon's pretty tough. Go see for yourself."

Penelope knows this for an indelible fact—with the things she's seen Gordon do in the length of time she's known him, it would be impossible to deny that Gordon's tough—but somehow she's still doubtful, and can't help but say so, "Really, though? When he came back to Auckland, he just seemed so dreadfully shaken up."

John shrugs. "Well, he'd had a pretty rough night and a fresh hangover to show for it. But he wouldn't want you worrying about him. You'll see in a couple minutes, Penny, and he's really okay. I promise."

The plane comes to a stop on the runway, a little rolling jolt as it brakes. But Penelope stays seated where she is, swept up suddenly in another wave of overwhelming melancholy, the sort that keep sneaking up on her, and she feels paralyzed by it, as a lump seems to swell up at the back of her throat and she has to take a deep breath to get past it.

She's been advised of the weather in Kansas, but she's still dressed for the chill and the rain in England and the comforts and privacy of the manor—a pair of forgivingly stretchy leggings in a rose coloured crushed velvet, her very favourite silk blouse, and the whole ensemble topped off with an elegantly oversized grey cardigan, with sleeves that fall past her wrists and swallow her hands almost up to the knuckles, even when cuffed. She fiddles anxiously with these now, pushing her finger tips through the spaces in the chunky knit, and feels that threatening pressure of tears again, as she softly confesses, "I _hate_ that I'm putting him through this."

At this John clears his throat rather pointedly, and reaches up to rub at the bridge of his nose. This is a tell he's had for nearly as long a Penelope's known him, and though she knows enough to recognize it, she's never managed to attach the behaviour to what exactly it betrays. There's a tactfully exasperated note in his voice as he carefully begins, "Penelope—listen. The last thing Gordon got put through was the proprietary vacuum tunnel for a high-velocity bullet train. _Backwards_. In a _submarine_. And that's just accounting for what _we're_ willing to do to him. I don't mean to make light of the circumstances, Penny, but I _promise_ —he's held up under worse."

Penelope's answering little giggle is somewhat watery, but still a giggle which needs to be stifled immediately and morphed into stern disapproval, scolding herself as much as John, "Oh, but it's _not_ funny. Oh…the poor thing; you absolute _beasts_. You're all horrid and mad and really you ought to be _stopped_."

John doesn't do wide-eyed innocence well, but he tries, spreading his hands as though the current confluence of events is somehow the least bit shocking to him. "Well, funny how it seems like we _have_ been. Whole operation's gone screeching to a halt. And _now_ , right as we were all coming up on the edge of falling apart and burning out and wanting to start taking big bloody bites out of each other's throats, there's a convenient little bump—sorry, pardon the phrase—in the road to give us all a bit of a breather? Penelope, maybe you'll notice how I'm not complaining. Trust me, whatever the excuse, he's needed this."

This is a different take on things that Penelope had expected, and she's given pause by the way John's framed the whole situation. "He _has_ been worn rather thin lately, hasn't he?" she asks, as though she needs the confirmation.

John nods. "That's putting it mildly. And even in spite of that, he's still mostly okay. But if for the first little while, he doesn't seem like himself—just, try and remember that there's a lot catching up with him. More than just the obvious. I know you two need to talk, but if you want to give that conversation the chance it deserves—maybe take a few days and let him decompress, before dealing with anything big. Don't rush this. Go easy on him." He pauses and clears his throat, "But, you know, you do actually have to _go_."

This is sound advice, and the sort of wisdom John tends to be good for. Penelope knows when she's being warned, and this is a warning she takes carefully to heart. And he may have been right in the beginning, as he reiterates now—she feels suddenly quite foolish for wringing her hands and dithering, when she knows full well that Gordon's waiting for her, and just as anxious as she is. "I know I'm being silly," she says aloud, giving John an apologetic shrug. "I don't mean to be such a ninny, I just—" A helpless little sigh slips away from her and only serves to make her sound more melancholy than she already is, as she continues, "—I can't bear to see him unhappy, it does such utterly awful things to my heart. I _do_ love him, John. Very dearly."

"I know, Penny. I'm pretty sure I've known since January. And believe me, I'm happy for you both, no matter what happens next." This acknowledgment is gentle, and for just a moment it betrays John's seldom seen softer side, the part so often hidden by the necessary briskness and professionalism entailed by his job. And as this returns with alacrity, he gives her a rather pointed look, and somehow manages to gesture (correctly) in the direction of the cabin door, and the waiting runway. "But maybe instead of moaning and whimpering at _me_ , you might go tell _him_ that."

The pushiness has heretofore been allowed to slide, but at this last instruction, Penelope straightens slightly where she sits and gives the scaled down version of John a rather pointed look of her own, infinitely disparaging and just a tad waspish as she asks, "John, leaving Gordon and I aside for the moment—are _you_ going to be quite all right without anyone to boss around for the indefinite future? Will you find a way to manage? Somehow?"

His answer is bright and immediate, "Oh, no, I'll be okay. I brought Alan up. I have a hardware overhaul to do."

"Then kindly go boss _Alan_ around."

"Sure. Go kiss my stupid brother on the mouth, or whatever it is that gets done in this scenario, because actually I lied when I said he was fine, and the truth is he's basically a wreck without you. Get the lead out, Penelope. Shake a leg."

Penelope huffs indignantly, and the fact that she rises from her seat is by no means a concession, so much as just what she was going to do anyway. "John, one of these days I'm going to have a spare moment, and I'm going to inform you of _precisely_ why the rest of your family makes you live in a tin can in low earth orbit."

All this earns her is a cheeky little mock salute. "Looking forward to it, your ladyship."

Penelope reaches down for the switch to toggle the comm off, and finds her spare moment, just before she disconnects the call, "It's because you're an absolute _ass_ , John Tracy," she informs him, and pushes the button with rather more force than might strictly be necessary.

But at least she remembers to thank the pilot on her way off the plane.


	47. chambray and silk

Penelope never changes either.

Even if he's always been afraid that one day she will, even after all the years he's known her, even here and now and when she's actually pregnant with his actual child—somehow she's still the exact same person he seems to fall in love with each and every single time he lays eyes on her.

And it's so entirely typical that she's landed in the land of denim and cotton gingham sporting crushed velvet and gauzy silk chiffon, all topped off with a cashmere sweater and a pair of suede ankle boots, because her version of dressing down for comfort still comes with a thousand dollar price tag. Gordon's idea of dressing down had been digging through the dresser in his bedroom until he found a pair of jeans that still fit and then raiding every other dresser in the house for a shirt that wasn't _quite_ as stupid as any of the t-shirts he'd numbly stuffed into a suitcase on his way off the island. The best option he'd found had been, gallingly, something of Scott's, whose closet had been the only one still stocked with anything worth wearing. He'd even done all the buttons up, and neatly rolled the sleeves up past his elbows.

Gordon's waiting to offer her a hand down the short flight of stairs from Tracy-One's cabin, and the first thing she does with all her lovely, expensive softness is fall from the bottom step into his arms—not the sort of sudden and terrifying nosedive out of consciousness that still scares him to remember, but rather the sort of purposeful fall that suggests something akin to the pull of gravity between them, as though she can't help it.

And all she's done since her arrival is wrap her arms around his waist and bury her face against the blue chambray of his (Scott's) shirt, and just make it clear that she wants nothing more than to be held. They're both lucky that the only thing in the world he wants to do is hold her, for long enough that Tracy-One's already taxied off down the runway and made its way back into the skies before he even remembers to kiss her, just a soft little peck against her hair as he breathes in the clean, fresh scent of it, and then rests his cheek against the crown of her head, still bowed against his shoulder.

It's hard to believe this is only the third time they've ever come together like this. First in Paris, then in Auckland, now in Kansas. If they're meant to have a life together—and whatever happens next, Gordon hopes more than anything that they can somehow still have a life together—then it's bound to be a life of meetings, and partings. He hopes he never loves her any less than he does, in the moments when he first gets to set eyes on her again, whether the absence was five minutes or five hours, five weeks or five months.

The world is enormous around them. The sky stretches into an infinity of the clearest blue, populated by picture perfect fluffy white clouds, drifting lazily across the sky, the only indication of the passage of time. The prairies around them stretch out towards the horizon, flat enough that the curve of the Earth seems as though it should be perceptible, because on a clear day you can just see for miles. If Kansas is good for nothing else (and truthfully, Kansas isn't good for much that's not wheat, corn, and occasional tornadoes), it's good for perspective. There's no one else around for miles, nowhere he needs to be but just right here, and nothing he needs to care about besides the woman he loves. Gordon's immensely, immeasurably thankful for his grandmother and her stubborn wisdom, happier to be home ( _really_ home) than he realized he could be, and hopeful for the time and the space they need to figure some things out.

Because even though he and Penelope have got everything in the world to talk about, but so far it hasn't yet seemed necessary to say anything. Not even hello.

Which isn't the first thing she says anyway, as she takes a deep breath and finally lifts her face from his chest, wearing a critical little frown as she comments, "—You don't smell at all like yourself."

Gordon is immediately and uncomfortably conscious of all the times he's wound up in Penelope's company smelling markedly less than amazing—but he knows this isn't one of them. He hasn't lately been at the bottom of the ocean for two straight weeks, and furthermore he's brushed his teeth _three times_ since waking up this morning, and made a point to be freshly showered, in clean clothes, and just generally neat and tidy. _Presentable_. Hence his choice of one of Scott's shirts, rather than one of his own, which generally have something stupid printed on the front. "…I don't?"

Penelope shakes her head and pulls his collar open, stretching up onto her tiptoes to sniff at something, drawing a deep breath from the hollow of his throat. She squints slightly, like she's trying to place something, though all it does is deepen her frown. "No, not in the least. Usually you're all sandalwood and citrus and lovely warm spice notes, but now it's some dreadful mess of patchouli and ambergris and eucalyptus and spearmint and _trying_ too hard. It's dreadful."

Gordon winces at the word _dreadful_ , and gently disengages Penelope from attempting to inhale his collarbone again. "Uh. Well, the shirt is Scott's? And I just used whatever soap was in the shower."

"Scott wears _entirely_ too much cologne." She wrinkles her nose (adorably) and shakes her head with a little sigh. "Or perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps it's just me. I'm beginning to discover that in my present circumstances, it seems as though I can _smell_ absolutely _everything_. And now that I've noticed, I can't seem to _stop_ noticing. It's like the world's very worst superpower." She sniffs the air again and then sighs. "And that's _not_ the Tom Ford I got him for Christmas last year."

"Oh, damn." _That_ can't be allowed to stand. "One sec."

Considering the state of things between him and Scott at the moment, Gordon has very little compunction about stepping back and hooking his fingers around a gap in the buttons, and popping the damn thing open with an expert flick of his wrists, like he's in the habit of busting the buttons off button-ups. It's just a cheap blue button-up shirt, cut from that sort of lighter-weight denim type stuff, standard pseudo-farmboy chic. Scott probably has another dozen of exactly like kind on the island, or even a few more back at the farmhouse. He won't miss it. It's nothing like bespoke, the stitching was done with the sort of cheap polyester thread that doesn't hold up under such a sudden assault, and the buttons all pop obligingly open like a bunch of little plastic bastards, pinging off the cracked asphalt of the runway.

This accomplished, he shrugs out of the shirt, balls it up, and tosses it over his shoulder to crumple forlornly on the ground a few feet away. He's got one of his t-own shirts on beneath it, the only white one he'd brought, and _maybe_ it proudly identifies him as an OFF-DUTY STRIPPER, but even if it does, he's not about to perpetuate anything that make Penelope even the least bit unhappy. Especially not if it has anything to do with Scott.

"There," he announces, grinning and pleased with himself as she laughs, a bright silver sound that rings through the surrounding silence, but doesn't have far to carry. "Hell with him, anyway. I'm _so_ damn done with Scott and his bullshit."

Penelope's laughter fades and takes her smile along with it, and her suspicion is immediate, obvious, as she asks, "What's he said this time?"

Gordon doesn't want to talk about it. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"That bad?" She bites her lip and her blue eyes widen, concerned and imploring, silently, for him to continue.

Gordon just shakes his head and steps close again, reaching down to pick up the suitcase she'd carried off the plane, and holding out a hand for her to take, to lead her up the runway to where he's left his ride. She does so, both of her hands clasping his, earnest as she asks again, "Was he absolutely hideous? Oh, darling, was he just beastly about it all when you told him?"

"Yeah, kinda. But never mind." Her skin is still cool to the touch, and offers a reminder of some readily available leverage, as far as discouraging any further conversation about his bastard eldest brother. Gordon neatly deflects her questions, and volleys back with his own interrogation, "Hey, though. So, since we're doing questions, how's the iron supplements treating you, Pen? Feeling okay? Headache, fatigue, nausea, general malaise? How much sleep've you had lately? Did you get enough to eat today? What's the last thing you ate? Mmm, hope it was some protein. C'mere a sec, I'd love to get your pulse."

She frowns at him for a moment, disapproving—but seems to take his point, acquiescing with a sigh and a rueful smile. She's pulled her hair up into some sort of half-chignon thing crossed with a ponytail, so that her champagne blonde curls tumble all down one shoulder, though they flick backwards to cascade down her back as she shakes her head. "Touche," she says, with an admirable degree of grace, though not _quite_ enough not to add, "But I'll have it out of you eventually."

"Probably," Gordon agrees, and gives her fingers a squeeze, pulling her along so that she comes closer, falls in step beside him. He takes the opportunity to let go of her hand, so he can wrap an arm around her slender shoulders, continuing, "But let's not ruin it all until we absolutely have to. You and me, Pen. Nobody and nothing else. C'mon. Let's go home."

* * *

The truck he'd left parked in the shade of the hangar at the end of the runway is an ancient, dark green diesel thing that had belonged to his grandfather, kept up and religiously maintained by his grandsons. It's over forty years old, a big, hulking pick-up fit for hauling whatever needed to be hauled around the farm. It's _ridiculously_ large, and, Gordon informs her, only _slightly_ less cumbersome than Thunderbird 2. Though after the month he's had flying his brother's ship, he concedes that it's not like he's got room to complain. It smells _abominable_ , reeking of old diesel in a way that makes her head swim and her stomach churn slightly, but she doesn't say anything on the subject, and accepts the hand he offers her to clamber up into the cab.

Her childhood home is thousands of miles behind her. _His_ childhood home home is only six miles ahead, though he obligingly and immediately does the conversion to kilometers for her benefit, and then adds, as he starts the engine with a throaty, titanic rumble that thrums through the cab of the truck, "About five minutes."

As they turn out of the gravel lot beside the airstrip, Gordon cheerfully informs her that to see six miles of Kansas is to see basically all of Kansas, and Penelope believes it. Still, she finds herself gazing out the window, with her elbow resting against the door and her chin propped on her hand, watching in contemplative silence as the expanse of the prairies blurs by.

This is a strange place.

She's set foot in half the countries of the world in the course of her lifetime, and somehow this anonymous stretch of the American midwest feels more alien than any of those. The agricultural heart of the English countryside is rolling and lush, swells of patchwork farmland in shades of deep green, bounded in by hedgerows and winding country roads. Here, the land is flat in all directions, and the fields they pass are either bare and fallow with a bristling scrub of weeds, or broad swaths of pale, dry grass, bleached by the sun overhead, and for some reason bounded in by post-and-wire fences, as though the ownership of either side of an enormous amount of nothing matters one way or the other. From above, the gridwork of motorways and access roads had been rigid, except where it wove around the outskirts of tiny towns and the occasional small city. They haven't yet passed any wheatfields, and Penelope realizes distantly that this is what she's been watching for.

"I always forget how weird it is here."

Gordon's spoken up and said just exactly what she's thinking, but since he's said it with a note of sheepish embarrassment (Penelope hasn't seen any sheep, either, nor livestock of any kind) politesse has her disagree with the assessment, just out of reflex, "Oh, no—it's not, really."

He flashes a grin at her across the cab of the truck—this is spacious enough that there's room for another fully grown adult on the bench seat between them, such that Penelope is suddenly unsure why she hadn't sat right beside him—and winks before returning his attention to the road ahead. "It's okay. I grew up here, I'm used to it. But I guess you've probably been in weirder places."

She shrugs. "Everywhere's strange to someone. You've seen quite as much of the world as I have, love, but if this is your home, then it's your home. I'm glad you wanted me to be here with you."

"I pretty much always want you to be with me, doesn't really matter where." Gordon doesn't look at her as he says so, such effortless and casual sincerity that it doesn't even merit eye-contact. It means he doesn't see it when she melts a little bit, at the ease of the statement. He keeps his eyes on the road, but drives with only one hand on the wheel, and the arm he'd stretched across the back of the seat slides down, as he reaches across the cab for her hand, in lieu of looking at her. "I'm glad you came."

If he's hoping for her hand, instead he's going to get all of her. Penelope unbuckles her seatbelt with a decisive click, slides across the seat to take the place right next to him, buckling back in and resting her head against his shoulder, as his arm readjusts to fall across the back of her neck.

He still smells wrong, but she's growing used to it, and it's better than the whiff of diesel she got through the aging seal around the passenger side window, to say nothing of the slightly musty scent of the interior of the truck itself. Ahead, through the front windscreen, the motorway stretches out endlessly towards the horizon, straight on, with nothing to stop it. It lays ordinate against the abscissa of the horizon, and cuts the world in half yet again. To the left, different to the right, a fringe of grayish-brown slowly resolves itself from a blur at the furthest limit of her sight, into a row of neatly planted sycamore trees, boughs still bare of all but the barest beginnings of greenery. As the truck slows slightly to make the turn, Penelope realizes that this stand of trees conceals a gravel road, branching off at a right angle to the highway.

"Might get a bit bumpy," Gordon apologizes, even as the truck's suspension bounces lightly off the edge of the pavement and onto the roughness of the backroad that cuts between the fields. Gravel crunches beneath the weight of the vehicle, and if he doesn't drive _quite_ as fast as he had with asphalt beneath the tires, he doesn't slow down nearly as much as she'd expected. When she straightens up and twists slightly in her seat to peer over her shoulder, at the cloud of dust being kicked up behind them.

Their destination is on the right this time, another smudge of trees clustered at the edge of the road, tall, dark conifers bounding in smaller deciduous trees this time. These have been planted tightly and almost crowded close together, but for a break between them, around another gravel drive. This one is narrower, with grass and weeds not just growing, but thriving in between the shallow tracks. Now the truck slows, turning right onto the driveway, and then practically crawling up it, approaching the farmhouse proper. And Penelope finds herself sitting up and leaning forward to catch a glimpse of the place.

The windbreak of trees conceals a surprisingly broad lawn, and bounds the farmhouse in on only three sides. Past the back, a field stretches out, dark and empty beneath the expanse of the sky. The farmhouse itself sits on a low hill, mounded up from the earth around it, so that the house stands tall and stately above the curve of the drive, as Gordon pulls up in front of the garage. This is separate, but both buildings are white beneath darkly dignified roofs of red tin. Four windows on the upper floor face the cardinal directions, and the southern face of the house is shaded beneath the gable of a wraparound porch. It's an old house, but not as ancient as some she's seen in England. It's nothing that fancy, relatively plain to look at, but it's been taken care of. The lawn around it is lush and green, running a little wild with early spring growth, better sheltered as it is from the harshness of the prairies.

It's not until the truck turns off that Penelope realizes just how loud it had been, not until the engine stills that she realizes how its movement had hummed all through her. In the stillness and the silence, suddenly it's just her and Gordon, and she's still nestled right against him, still with his arm around her shoulders, and her hand has found its way to his thigh, the denim of his jeans worn soft from washing and wear, and warm beneath her palm. His arm tightens around her gently, the beginning of a hug, and she leans into him.

"It's not much," he starts, but there's no concealing the note of pride in his tone, the incredible depth of fondness for the place he's brought her, so far away from the world at large. "But it's home."


	48. lilac and linen

Creighton-Ward Manor has over a dozen bedrooms. The farmhouse has four. Creighton-Ward Manor has a ballroom. The farmhouse has a mudroom. Creighton-Ward Manor has a poolhouse, an elegant space with Venetian columns, all clad in gleaming white marble. The farmhouse has a pond out back, and having attempted to do so at least twice in the past, Gordon does not recommend swimming in it.

But home is home. And he's happy to be here. He glances at Penelope, trying to read her expression as she looks up at the house.

She's silent beside him, though she's leaned forward to peer through the windshield at the old place, pensive. The windbreak planted around the property is dense and well-established, three rows of trees staggered in height and girth from the outside in, with nearly a hundred years of growth behind them. They cut the farmhouse off from the emptiness of the surrounding prairies, make the place seem sheltered and safe, though the only thing that _really_ protects the farmhouse is isolation and anonymity. There's nothing like the same level of security or the same kind of secrecy that wards Tracy Island, nor even their ranch out in the southwest, into which their father had sunk a cool couple billion, in the name of creating a space for IR to test and train. Penelope's been _there_ before. But she's never been _here_.

Because this place is for family. For _his_ family, specifically. Even putting his mind to it, Gordon's not sure whether he can even remember the last time the farmhouse hosted a stranger. Even Kayo, whose known them more or less since they'd first left the farmhouse, has only been to Kansas with the rest of them once or twice, and admits that the place makes her feel uncomfortable. Like she doesn't belong.

Gordon really hopes the same isn't true for Penny, but as she turns her gaze from the window to look at him, the light in her eyes and the warmth in her smile makes him realize he has nothing to worry about.

"It's wonderful," she says, all perfect sincerity and genuine delight, and her hand where it rests on his thigh squeezes gently. "I couldn't have pictured it, but somehow it's still just exactly what I imagined. It's utterly lovely and so blessedly quiet."

"Didn't used to be. Used to be you could hear the five of us all the way from the highway. That's what my grandpa always said, anyhow." Gordon grins, taking her hand and shoving the driver's side door open. "C'mon, I'll show you around."

The pickup is big enough that getting down from the cab is a bit of a climb. Gordon's used to it—has been riding along in Grandpa's truck since he was barely taller than the running boards—but for Penelope's benefit he turns around, once his boots hit the gravel of the drive, and reaches up to help her down. The easiest way to do this is just to steady his hands on her hips and let all five-feet-three-inches of her step daintily down onto the running boards and then to the ground—but this puts his hands in the vicinity of her abdomen, and the soft curve of her stomach against his thumbs makes him remember why she's _here_.

And for a moment he freezes, as his internal landscape suddenly shears sharply sideways at the reminder.

Their baby is as big as a raspberry. Their baby is losing the webbing between its fingers and toes, their baby has the beginnings of tastebuds. Their baby came into existence in the early hours of January 26th, 2062, on one of the best nights of his life so far. _Their baby_ is a concept he needs to stop thinking about, because what matters more is _Penny's pregnancy_. The two are very different things, and the latter is the far more pressing concern.

But then her hand catches his forearm, steadying herself as she steps down from the cab of the truck, and then she's on the ground beside him, and the moment passes. If she's noticed his hesitation, she makes no comment, just slips an arm around his waist and leans against him again, looking up at the farmhouse, examining it from the outside. "All five of you grew up here?" she asks, looking up at the house and tilting her head against his shoulder. The subject changes, and he relaxes slightly.

"Mostly. 'Til I was about thirteen. My mom was pregnant with me when we first moved in. Al was born five years later."

"Which was your room?"

There's still a lilac bush outside his bedroom window, though it's twice the height it was when it was planted, stretching up past the top of the covered porch, boughs actually brushing the windowframe. Truthfully, it's probably started tend towards overgrown, unkempt. For all that it's thriving, it's still too early in the season for the lilacs to be in bloom quite yet, though the buds are visible on the branches, and it should be soon. Gordon has a crystal clear memory of Alan's second birthday, and a picnic beside a much smaller lilac bush, in full, glorious bloom. It should start flowering any day now. He hopes they're here to see it, as he points out the second floor's eastern window.

"There. Me and Virgil, bunkbeds. Scott and John were across the hall, my mom had the nursery with Alan whenever my dad was away. My grandparents had the master on the main floor. That's where I crashed when I got in. I didn't even make the bed, I just passed out on the bare mattress."

Penelope makes a soft little noise of what might be disapproval in response to this, and tilts her head against his shoulder. "Tired, my love?" she asks, all concern and sympathy.

Gordon shrugs, not actually wanting to concern her. Not feeling entitled to her sympathy. "Kinda was, yeah. Caught a couple hours of sleep, though, and it's still holding me over. C'mon."

A winding gravel path curves away from the driveway, and up the low hill that the house sits upon. Penelope's arm loosens around his waist, and she moves to take his hand instead, lacing her fingers between his as he leads her along, up the path towards the porch, up creaking wooden stairs, and up to the front door. Gordon's ancient copy of their family's house key has been added onto the same keyring as the truck's, which he'd found in the same kitchen drawer as ever. This keychain also includes a handful of other keys to a handful of other things, and the whole assembly feels heavy in his hand as he pulls it out of the pocket of his jeans.

A porch swing hangs to the left of the front door, swaying slightly in the barest breeze that manages to get past the windbreak. The rest of the front porch is empty of much else, but in Gordon's memory there are rocking chairs, hanging planters brimming with brightly coloured petunias. If his grandmother is a menace in the kitchen, she was a miracle worker in the garden. The old kitchen plot behind the house is probably well overgrown by now, but the fence around it probably still stands. Slotting the key into the deadbolt for the front door, Gordon wonders idly if she misses it.

The door jams on the first try as he unlocks it, before muscle memory kicks in and he remembers the particular way one has to open this particular door, lifting the handle slightly as one turns. He'd been running on autopilot when he'd first arrived, he'd done it automatically. In Penelope's company he finds himself nervous, overthinking things, and he feels oddly self-conscious as he pushes the door open, holds it for her.

They haven't been together long enough (or often enough) for him to have quite picked up on the fact that this is just a habit of hers, but as she passes him, crossing the threshold, she trails her hand lightly across his shirtfront. It's the sort of barely thought of, intimate gesture that comes so naturally to her, and still makes his knees a little weak. He needs to take a second to steady himself, as the scent of her perfume ghosts past him, the same breath of lilac that will fill the air outside, once the buds flower into blossoms. He steps inside after her, and closes the door.

And for a moment he's weirdly dazed, disoriented. The house he grew up in seems suddenly unfamiliar with her in it, as though she's parted a rose-colored veil by her entrance. He's abruptly conscious of the way the farmhouse wears its age, because it's not nearly as graceful after a mere century of time as Creighton-Ward Manor is after nearly _four_. The part of the world he came from is bare and empty and charmless, nothing like the lush English countryside, just the vague desolation of the American midwest. Of course she's gracious enough that it doesn't show, but this place is so far beneath her that it's almost jarring that she's even here.

"C'mon," he says a third time, though by this point she's ahead of him, waiting in the front hallway, patient but expectant, and hopefully ignorant of his sudden existential crisis on behalf of his childhood home. "Lemme show you the place."

* * *

When he shows her the master bedroom, Penelope abruptly decides that this is where her informal little tour of the house will end—or at least be put on an indefinite hold. It's not a big house, there's not much to see. The rest of the main floor is all living space, homey and vaguely rustic, a place all well-worn and broken in by the family it belongs to. The bulk of this is an open plan that muddles kitchen and dining room and living room all together. Bright light from broad windows fills the room, and the view to the north is of the farmland that lies beyond the open end of the windbreak. It's lovely, all airy and spacious and comfortable. But Penelope is more interested in the room that adjoins the common space, and when she's shown inside, it's where she decides she wants to stay.

The master bedroom faces the porch, and it's cool and dim and dark. Gordon's left his suitcase lying open in the corner, on the same bare hardwood that the bedroom has in common with the rest of the house. The bed itself is modestly queen-sized, smaller than her own at home, and as Gordon had mentioned, absent of any bedlinens. He's just ducked into the master bathroom to double check if there are any sheets in the cupboards inside, nervous bustle and busywork as he has been all throughout the process of showing her the house so far. Every room seems to have an associated list of chores to go along with it, and he's rattled these off absently, with a manufactured urgency, as if there'll be some associated consequence if he doesn't get everything done.

It's as though without anything specific to do, he needs to invent work for himself. Penelope doesn't much care for that notion, and isn't about to let it slide.

"I think I should like to lie down," she announces, not because she's especially tired, but because she's certain that _he_ must be.

This, naturally, precipitates a flurry of concern as Gordon pops back out of the bathroom, armed with an armful of linens and frowning at her as he asks, "Yeah? You feel okay?"

Penelope smiles gently as she relieves him of the sheets, stretching up onto her toes to kiss his cheek. "I feel as though I should like to lie down."

He seems disarmed by the fact that she's taken the bedlinens, but also isn't presumptuous enough to take them back. He hesitates only briefly before starting in on another list of things he needs to do, "Well, lemme make the bed, and then I'll run out and park the truck properly, and grab your bag—d'you want water or anything, can I get you—"

She twists away when he holds a hand out for the bedsheets, and shakes her head. "I don't want you to do any of those things. I want you to stay. I want you to come to bed and hold me."

"Oh…uh…" It's absolutely transparent how this sends him to war with himself, frozen on the spot, caught between the desire to do whatever she asks and the obligation he's invented to do whatever he thinks should be done. He's nothing like this indecisive in his professional life. Penelope has seen Gordon react to the demands of an evolving scenario with an immediacy that's almost preternatural. To see him waver over something like this makes her realize just how completely she gives him pause.

And, well. There's a power there that she can't help but relish.

But then, it may just be that he's dreadfully tired.

Penelope tosses the bedsheets aside to land on the bare mattress, and steps closer, reaching up to clasp her hands at the back of Gordon's neck and lean into him. She's deliberately made herself soft and small, pretty and feminine in plush fabrics and low heels. This is not the way she generally prefers to move through the world at large—usually she's armed and armored in couture, in five inches of extra height, in glamour and class and an air of resolute untouchability—but in private, alone in the intimate company of someone she loves, Penelope's quietly delighted to be so much like herself. "Stay," she urges softly. "Is there anything you could need to do that wouldn't keep?"

"I mean…" He hedges, even still, though his hands have automatically dropped to rest on her hips. Somehow he's contrived to find the narrow gap between velvet and silk where her skin is softer than either. His palms are lightly calloused, coarse the way linen is next to cashmere, and warm where he touches her.

She shivers, involuntary, and looks up at him with undisguised longing, as she continues, "Darling, when have you and I _ever_ been together with so much time stretching out in front of us? No one knows where I am. No one would dare call you away. Do you realize you've _never_ held me without both of us knowing how soon you'd need to leave? Isn't that just _dreadful_ , my love?"

"Well, when you put it _that_ way…" Gordon pauses and directs a meaningful look at the bedsheets, before pointing out, "Still gonna need to make the bed, though."

"You might at least let me help."

Gordon shakes his head vigorously at the mere suggestion, protesting, "I am an _actual_ Kansas farm boy standing on _actual_ Kansas soil, and Kansas will _actually_ crack open beneath my feet and swallow me whole if I let you _help_ , on account of you're a lady and a guest and my girlfriend and also six weeks _pregnant_. You can go pick a quilt from the linen closet in the bathroom."

" _Bossy_." Penelope pouts, but playfully, as Gordon goes about the business of dressing the bed. "Are we not meant to be playing house?" she inquires, calling the question lightly over her shoulder, though she does as she's told and slips into the bathroom in search of a quilt.

There's an audibly strained chuckle from the bedroom before she gets her answer. "Pen, we are _so_ far from the realm of me knowing what the hell I'm meant to be doing. I'm making it all up as I go and just hoping I don't fuck up too bad."

Penelope sighs to herself and glances in the mirror, frowning critically at her image. She's made herself soft, for a certainty, but she knows she can be softer still. Softness sounds like something that would be especially beneficial to Gordon right now.

To that end, she shrugs out of her cardigan and hangs it up on a handy hook beside the shower door. She unpins her hair and lets it fall loose over her shoulders, reaching up to tousle her fingers through it. Her blouse is billowy and vaguely bohemian and gossamer-soft white chiffon, nearer to opaque than sheer, but still sheer enough that the outline of her bra is visible beneath it in the right lighting.

The early afternoon light through the bathroom window is the right lighting. Decisive, Penelope reaches up to undo the back clasp of her bra and perform the deft and clever maneuver necessary to slip out of it without removing her shirt. It joins her cardigan on the hook behind her, and she turns back to the mirror, her hands at her hips as she arches her back slightly, trying to discern if she's achieved the desired result, silk smooth and soft against her bare skin. She slips her hands beneath the hem of her shirt and makes a few pert and pertinent adjustments.

Satisfied, her last step is to step daintily out of her boots, and to slip off a pair of gauzy nylon ankle socks. She stuffs the pair of these into the pocket of her cardigan, and then directs her attention rather indifferently to the selection of quilts in the bathroom linen cupboard, seizing the first one she sees. Thus armed, with the chill of the terracotta bathroom tiles cool against her the soles of her bare feet, Penelope returns to the bedroom, where she finds Gordon still in the midst of making the bed, creasing hospital corners sharp as knives as he deals with the topsheet.

For a few moments she watches him, before he can notice her doing so. The intensity with which he's applied himself to the task at hand seems to betray a certain sense of tension—admittedly understandable—and now that Penelope's noticed it, she can see it in the way he carries himself. Something about the way he squares his shoulders, something about the set of his jaw, something about the fixed quality of his gaze. Some suite of dozens of tiny cues that tell her that he's out of sorts.

And of course that simply won't do.

"You make your bed like you had an astronaut for a father," she comments, crossing the room to interrupt him about the process. She drops the quilt to drape over the footboard, steps into the place his shadow belongs, and catches his wrist in the act of tucking one of those knife's edge creases beneath the weight of the mattress that he said he'd just fallen onto, exhausted, only hours ago.

In the act of arresting the task he's set himself, Penelope leans forward just enough that her body through the sheer silk of her shirt brushes against his arm, smiling to herself as she tugs the bedsheet loose from where he's started to tuck it in, and blithely going on, "I'm sure it's _very_ impressive when all's said and done, my love, bounce a sixpence off it and so on and so forth—but I'm afraid I don't like a bed made so smartly that I need to infiltrate my way into it."

"O-oh. Uh, sorry, I didn't—uh, I d-didn't think…" Whatever he didn't think about stammers into nothingness as he trails off. She'd _felt_ him freeze when she brushed oh-so-casually up against him, and now, coyly, Penelope pretends that she hadn't. She does it again, sidling deliberately between him and the bed, bending over squarely in front of him to smooth her hands over the topsheet.

This time he can't seem to help but catch his hands at her hips, and they stay there as she straightens up again, turning around in perfectly simulated innocence. It's all exquisitely calculated, and Penelope looks up at him in the same moment that her lips part ever-so slightly, dewy eyes widening the merest fraction beneath dark lashes, as though she's surprised to find him behind her, as though noticing him for the very first time.

It's barely afternoon. The only darkness they've got is the shade of the covered porch, and it's _so_ quiet here. It's so beautifully, blissfully quiet that Penelope can hear the silence that's fallen between them, and the way his breath stutters as she lifts a hand to brush her fingertips over his lips before he can do anything _quite_ so stupid as try to _say_ something.

"You _do_ look tired, darling," she observes softly, and can tell that this is true by the way he doesn't protest, knows better than to argue with her on the subject. Her hand moves from his lips to cradle his jaw, and the other finds one of his hands at her waist, squeezing gently. "Come to bed with me. Please."

And she's asked so nicely, it's hardly as though he could decline the invitation.


	49. good and evil

B-cup. Just the tiniest bit larger on the left than the right. Her left. His right. Blush pink skin around pert rosebud nipples, bare and barely hidden beneath a scant millimeter of translucent white silk. Perfectly accented with a drop of perfume on her breastbone that will fill every upcoming moment with the intoxicating scent of her, radiating off her skin with the heat of her body.

There are worse things in the world to wake up to than a faceful of the Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward's absolutely flawless breasts.

One of these things is the fact that Gordon hadn't actually meant to fall asleep in the first place. That he'd meant to just obligingly settle down in bed next to her, to hold her just long enough for her to drift off in his arms, like back in Auckland, and then to gently disengage so that he could quietly go about the business of getting the house in some semblance of order, making sure that the place was presentable before she woke up again, wanting to see the rest of it.

This plan has backfired almost completely, because Penelope is fundamentally a force of evil.

Or, if not quite evil, exactly, per se, then instead whichever malicious cosmic agency it is that aligns itself in direct opposition to the noble goals of hardworking and decent Kansas farmboys, who are just doing their damnedest to make the best of the circumstances in which they've landed. The indulgent, indolent, idle luxury of an early afternoon nap cannot possibly be a force for good in the world. Or at least not in the part of the world that constitutes Kansas.

"…time'sit?" Gordon mumbles the question before he's fully awake, before remembering that she's probably sleeping too. He's pretty sure that she'd been curled up on top of him, her face nestled against his shoulder, her breathing slow and content and steady. In whatever time has passed since what he can last remember, apparently they've more or less traded places, because she's very much the one holding him now, with her fingers twining gently through his hair and her body warm beneath his.

She's not asleep and sounds more awake than he is as she answers the question, softly whispering, "I don't know, dearest. Does it matter? Shh. Go back to sleep."

"Can't." Opening one eye and discovering that the bedroom is darker than he can account for by factoring in the shade of the porch, Gordon groans aloud, intensely frustrated with himself for sleeping until nightfall. "I was gonna mow the lawn," he grumbles, stifling a yawn in favour of a dejected sigh, and adding, "I've gotta go move the truck."

Penelope, in her consummately wicked way, responds to this lament by pushing her fingers deeper through his hair, gentle pressure against the curve of his skull, as she pulls him insistently closer to the place where he's very comfortably nestled his head against her chest, while he's slept away the entire afternoon. The quilt is still draped across the footboard at the end of the bed, and the pair of them are nestled down in a tangled nest of bedsheets, pulled loose from where they should've been tucked in beneath the mattress. The window across the room has been opened at some indeterminate point in time, and the curtains billow lazily in the beginnings of a breeze, as the weather starts to turn, and brings in the telltale scent of rain along with it.

"Oh well," Penelope says simply, indifferent to the fact that the lawn has gone unmowed and the truck has gone unmoved. "You were tired."

"'M'not tired," Gordon objects, closing his eyes again as her fingertips against the back of his head lightly trace circles through his curls, exactly the sort of thing he can remember his grandmother doing in the face of similar protests, making him drowsy against his will. It's extremely unfair that this still works, fully two decades later.

"Well, hopefully not, after a very well-deserved six hours of sleep, my love. You did just drop right off, Gordon, darling. You must've needed it."

She's just incredibly smug about the whole situation, too.

And she's warm and soft and she smells amazing, and her breasts are just right there, being fantastic. Even just passively, she's making it very hard—difficult—to get up and do the things that he knows need doing. He never went to grab her bag out of the truck, he still has to move the truck, tucking it up in the garage because the forecast had threatened rain overnight. They both could probably stand to eat something—especially Penelope—but Gordon's not even sure if there's any food in the house. Closing his eyes and listening past the soft sound of her heartbeat, he's pretty sure he can hear the distant but unmistakable rumble of thunder, which more or less forces the issue.

"Sounds like it's gonna rain," he tells her, and hopes that her answer will be, "oh well, then obviously you'd best get up and go move the truck", because of course he'll do anything she tells him to.

Instead, she says, "Oh, how perfectly lovely. I do love falling asleep to the sound of rain."

This is the wrong answer and incredibly unhelpful.

"I've gotta go move the truck," he repeats, for emphasis, but mostly in effort to motivate himself to get the hell out of bed.

Penelope's countermove is to yawn and stretch (wickedly) and blatantly disagree, dismissive as she tells him, "No, you don't."

Gordon sighs, frustrated, but no closer to getting out of bed; not lifting his forehead from where it rests against her collarbone, the rest of him wrapped up around her, arms about her waist, one of his legs caught between hers. At this point, getting up will require some extrication, and so far he's still deeply unmotivated to make it happen, even as he half-heartedly tries again, "I've gotta go move the truck outta the rain, or else my grandpa will kill me."

"…Darling, unless I'm very much mistaken, isn't your grandfather dead?"

Objectively true, but irrelevant. "If I leave his truck out in the rain, then my grandpa will rise up out of the earth to come kill me."

"Oh." This, at least, seems to give her a moment's pause, and her fingertips stop twining through his hair to drum against his skull for a few thoughtful moments, before she inquires, "Well, how far away is he buried?"

"Not far enough that his zombie ass couldn't come out here and kill me for leaving his truck out in the rain."

"But far enough that it would take him a while to get here. And it's not even raining yet," Penelope concludes, and cuddles stubbornly closer, and presses a kiss against the crown of his head. "Not that it especially matters, because you really don't need to move the truck."

Gordon shakes his head. This is yet another major clash of their most fundamental selves, disguising itself as a minor argument, and they haven't even been alone together for half a day yet. He loves Penelope. Really and genuinely, with absolutely everything he has, Gordon loves Penelope, and has loved her for years. But deep down he's also always been afraid that they could never work out, in the end, because of some quintessential difference between them.

It's hard to articulate exactly what this difference is—but it's probably given its purest expression by the way Penelope seems completely uninterested in the mundane reality of a necessary task, and in fact seems determined to oppose it on principle. It puts him unpleasantly in mind of their argument in Auckland, not even all that long ago, and the way she'd so stubbornly refused to do what he'd known was right. It's what finally pushes him to push himself up, disengaging from all her indulgent warmth and idle loveliness, sitting up and stretching, shifting to the edge of the bed away from her. "Nah, Pen, I really do."

Penelope twists from her side onto her back, and while it's certainly early evening outside, it's not yet dark enough that he can't see the distracting outline of her body through that gauzy silk shirt, though it's the reproachfulness of her gaze that draws and holds his attention, and she says, "No, Gordon, you really don't—because after you fell asleep, I did."

That doesn't make sense. There's no correlation to go with the causation in that sentence, and Gordon blinks, confused, echoing, "You did…? You did what? What'd you do? Fell asleep? Well, yeah, I'd hope you—"

"I moved the truck," she corrects, and her reproachful gaze shifts over her shoulder to the other side of the bed, as she reaches up and over, her fingers stretching out to grasp his keyring from where she's left it on the nightstand—emphatically not where he'd left it, in the pocket of his jeans. There's a soft jingle as she snags it, rolling back over and proffering it for him to see. "You fell asleep. You were very, very tired. Too tired even to know it, perhaps. So I took your keys. Then I went and got my bag, and I put the truck up in the garage. Then I put my things away, and I found a sandwich that Chef packed in my bag—cornichons and goose liver pate, because dear Chef does get very concerned when my anaemia acts up—and so I ate that. And I took my iron tablets and they were horrid. Then I brushed my teeth and had a shower, and then because I was bored, I put your things away, and then I had a little look around the house—which is delightful, by the way, very charming—and then I came back, and you were still sleeping and so I took a lovely little nap next to you, my darling."

This is a very long list and Gordon's gotten stuck on the very first item. "You took my keys?"

Penelope favours him with a look, wry and amused and mildly annoyed all at once, as she points out, "I took initiative. I also took your trousers, pet, and you haven't even noticed."

The truth of her statements thus far is reinforced by his suddenly apparent lack of his favourite jeans, never mind the keys that had been in the pocket thereof. At a bit of a loss for words, Gordon's initial impulse is to scold her, in pretended outrage, "You can't just take a guy's pants, Penelope."

This earns him a wicked little smile and another arch little shrug of her shoulders, such that her body moves beautifully beneath her silk shirt, "They seemed as though they'd be uncomfortable to sleep in. If I'd taken anything further, I would've been taking advantage." She pauses at this and mocks an exaggerated and tragic little sigh. "Though with the way I'm lying here and being just tremendously sexy and you're simply not doing anything about it, perhaps I've been too subtle for you to take the hint?" At this she reaches down and flicks the bedsheets aside, exposing one of her legs, smooth and pale in the low light of the bedroom, and bare all the way up past the hem of her shirt.

Abruptly it seems like it might not be such a bad thing that he's woken up, finally well-rested, beside the love of his life—who isn't actually evil orwicked, and instead just perfect and wonderful and lovely; kind and gentle and sweet and good; not to mention tremendously sexy. His eyes have finally adjusted to the twilit darkness and she's just gorgeous beneath it, and another distant rumble of thunder seems like a herald of good things to come. Though he does have to correct her, reaching out to trace a fingertip delicately along the appealing curve of her bare calf, grinning as he says, "I haven't done anything about it. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna do anything about it."

Her smile is the most beautiful thing for miles around, and this is taking into consideration the towering magnificence of a prairie thunderstorm rolling in from the west, to hide away the glory of the sky above. "Oh?" she prompts, challenging and expectant. "And what do you suppose it might be?"

"Dunno!" Gordon answers cheerfully, ditching his underwear with a practiced ease and climbing back into bed. Kneeling on the mattress, he tosses the bed sheets aside with a flourish, so that her blouse is the last thing left between them as he leans in to kiss her, stopping only long enough to suggest, "Let's find out."

* * *

She's fairly certain that the heavens themselves must tear open in the same moment as the peak of her (third) climax. The last of her willfully helpless, gasping cries of plesaure are swallowed up by a tremendous roll of thunder, the sort that seems to reverberate through the entire world, as the downpour that follows it saturates the eager, impatient earth. Her body shudders helplessly against the demands of his, her fingertipss bite a little deeper into his shoulders. Her voice falters, almost protesting as it all starts to go a little too far, become a little too much—but with only a few more hard, certain thrusts of his hips, he finishes inside her only moments later. She hears herself moan softly as she wilts limply against him, momentarily spent and dizzily euphoric.

There are worse things to be worn out by than the thorough, athletic, and rigorous affections of a former gold medal Olympian.

Breathless and vaguely disoriented—her legs still locked around Gordon's waist, her arms still clinging around his neck—she sits in his lap, upright and astride in the middle of the mattress. Even on top of him, with the bounce of the bed springs providing additional leverage, she's still fairly sure he'd done nearly all the work.

But then, Gordon is just tremendously good in bed. In her (limited, but promising) experience, he tends to fuck her as though the fate of the world hangs on the balance of how hard (and/or how often) she comes.

It's been surprising to realize that the earnest, diligent, and quintessential decency that informs the work ethic of the Kansas farmboy is something that extends into the realm of her own specific sexual gratification, which he seems to consider to be about on par with a moral imperative.

If she were in any state to do the math—and presently she is not, still recovering her composure as the final few moments of la petite mort begin to diminish—she might be able to work out how long it's been since the last time he'd done this to her. Longer than twenty-four hours, but fewer than forty-eight, though the addition of timezones and air travel across them complicates this calculation too completely for her to even begin to contemplate.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. It was just a thought that fluttered to the surface of her brain in the haze of the aftermath, how different this time was from the last time, and yet how little separates the two occasions, really. More than a day, but not much more. An entire world of distance. And yet the only reason they're together again, here and now, is a small, secret truth, still so new in her awareness that sometimes, just briefly, she manages almost to forget about it.

Burying her face against Gordon's shoulder and closing her eyes, Penelope decides that this could be one of those times. Subsiding into a state of purposeful ignorance, deliberately choosing to inhabit a blissful little schism of reality where she doesn't need to decide what to do about her unexpected pregnancy, and instead only needs to decide whether or not she's hungry.

She wonders what Gordon's thinking about.

He's still holding her, and she must be clinging a little bit, because while one of his arms remains wrapped securely around her, holding her close—his other hand comes up to stroke her hair, as he softly asks, "You okay, Pen?"

Of course, obviously he'd be thinking about her.

"Mmhmm."

Thus assured, his embrace loosens slightly, and she allows herself to relax as he dips her back down to the mattress, letting her recline amidst a nest of pillows and tangled bedsheets, as another roll of thunder joins the sounds of the downpour filling the room, the scent of rain heavy on the air that wafts through the window she'd opened. It's dim, not quite dark, and her eyes have adjusted to the point that she can watch Gordon where he sits, cross-legged and facing her from the middle of the bed, idle and untroubled in the afterglow. The fall of night casts him all in shades of deep blue, washing out all of the warm tones in his hair and skin and eyes, making her think of gold beneath the sea, hidden away by the depths.

He's just unfairly gorgeous, in an easy and indifferent sort of way, young and handsome and unselfconscious. Through half-lidded eyes as she pretends to doze off, instead Penelope appreciates the span of his shoulders and the lean muscle of his arms, supporting his weight where he leans back against the mattress. Looking up and past her to the window framed by the posts of the headboard, a flash of lightning illuminates his features for a moment, catching the angle of his jaw and the sharpness of his cheekbones—and for just a moment, a flicker of sadness, something almost like pain.

"There was a storm on the island," he says aloud, mentioning it as though it's relevant to some aspect of a conversation they weren't actually having, as these are the first words to break the comfortable, affectionate silence that had fallen between them.

His tone is nonchalant, the statement is unattached to any kind of sentiment—except for that brief flash of injury, meant to go unseen in the dark, but his face has a tendency to betray his heart, even if he can keep his voice bright and steady. Penelope is far, far more practiced in the art of a neutral countenance, and opens her eyes as she makes a note of the fact that something about this storm has upset him, somehow, reminded him of something painful. He's thus far been cagey about what the receipt of their news was like on Tracy Island, but from his reluctance to talk about it, she's formed the impression that it wasn't good.

She'll have the truth out of him eventually, but it's too lovely and intimate a moment to spoil with the third degree. He'll tell her when she's ready. For now she's content to let him pretend that all's well.

Instead, she feigns an interest in the disparate qualities of thunderstorms in the places Gordon calls home, and remarks, "They must be very different sorts of storms."

Gordon nods and his attention drifts back down to her, his expression softening into that crooked little half-smile she likes so much. "Oh, yeah, totally. Kinda wish we'd caught the start of this one, they're a hell of a sight at a distance. Beautiful and terrifying."

Penelope smiles back, and observes, "Like me."

Gordon scoffs at that, and that little half-smile becomes a proper grin. "You're not terrifying."

Not when I haven't yet found out who hurt you, I'm not. "Not presently."

He doesn't believe her. "Not ever, that I can remember."

Penelope shrugs and reaches out to trace her fingertips along the nearest available bit of him, which happens to be nothing more interesting than one of his kneecaps, though he immediately obliges her desire for contact and moves to snuggle up beside her, burrowing into the nest of disarrayed bedsheets. The breeze through the window was pleasantly warm when she'd first opened it, but the rainstorm has drawn all the heat from the air, and now it's grown cool and chill across her skin. She shivers as she settles against the comforting warmth of his body once more. Her head rests against his chest as his arms wrap around her again, and she concludes, "Then I suppose we'll simply need to spend more time together."

There's an affirmative little squeeze of her shoulders. "Fine by me. I'll tell you if you're ever terrifying. I know I don't have to tell you you're beautiful, but I will anyway, 'cuz you are."

Penelope smiles, and tips her face up to lightly kiss his jaw. "I like it when you tell me. I love you very much."

This is the first time she's said so since being here, and she resolves to say it much more often, because the joy it causes is immediate and physical and obvious. Gordon hugs her—gently, but with a suddenness that makes it seem as though it must just be pure compulsion—as though such a simple declaration needs to be caught and kept hold of; as though it could slip away. She's almost certain she catches the slightest tremor of emotion in his voice, as he answers, "I love you too, Pen."

It tells in the way he clears his throat that he must've gotten just a little choked up—Penelope marvels at how easily this happens to him—and if the kiss he presses against her forehead is undeniably tender, it's still a gesture that sharply truncates the closeness between them, as he shifts away from her, and sits up again. He brushes a hand through his hair, a tufted mess of tumbled blond curls, and he sounds rather vague as he starts, "I should really—"

"…stay in bed with me?" Penelope proposes hopefully, though she knows better than to expect him to do so. Nearly eight hours of sleep achieved, after the month he's had, Gordon's hardwired to roll out of bed and straight into a Thunderbird, but apparently a thunderstorm will suffice, if there's no Thunderbird readily available. "You can't mean to mow the lawn."

Gordon's already found his briefs again, pulled them back on, and recovered his t-shirt from where he'd thrown it across the room, in a manner most befitting an OFF-DUTY STRIPPER, and is now on the hunt for his jeans. These are in the last place he'll possibly look, folded neatly and put away in the dresser. "Well, not in this," he answers, jerking a thumb at the window as Penelope pulls the sheets up against the chill of the air, rolling over to try and reclaim the warmth of him from the newly vacated space on the other side of the bed. "I am kinda starving, though. Penny. Where're my pants?"

That, at least, is slightly more understandable than any desire he might have to leave her, though she doesn't intend to make it any easier. "Do you really need them?" she asks, wrapping herself up in the bedsheets and trying to decide whether she wants food or more sleep.

"Well, it's a gas stove and I make an effort not to be pantsless around open flame if I can help it."

"Mm. Probably wise." Twisted up in bedsheets and reclining amongst the pillows like the subject of a rennaissance painting, Penelope stretches and yawns. She has no intention of telling him where his pants are, and now he's checking the underside of the bed. "Can you cook?" she inquires curiously, in an attempt to inform her decision about sleep. The sandwich she'd found wrapped up with an ice pack in her luggage had taken the edge, but that was hours ago, and there's a rumble of hunger in her stomach to go with the storm outside.

He pops up at the edge of the mattress as the search continues, leaning against it and pausing to rub a hand against the back of his neck. "Depends how high your standards are," he replies, sheepish. "If you're expecting foie gras and cornichons again, you might have to settle for liverwurst and pickles—but it's pretty long odds on there being any liverwurst in this house. 'Bout fifty-fifty on the pickles. And I'm not feeding you anything, lady, until you tell me where my pants are."

The impulse to laugh in his face is surpassed only by her desire to tease him, "That's terribly tough talk from someone without any pants."

It doesn't work and he just chuckles. "I think we both know how dangerous I am without any pants, babe."

Penelope doesn't have a readily available rebuttal for this, and instead feels the faint creep of heat into her cheeks, despite being less dressed than he is, and well-aware of just what exactly he means when he says dangerous. Despite the fact that it's not quite what she'd consider a threat, exactly, Penelope gives in and waves vaguely across the room in the direction of the dresser. "Well, I folded them up and put them in the drawer with the rest of your things while you were sleeping. Yours is the right side, mine is the left."

She hadn't thought much of the gesture at the time, she just considers it rather barbaric to live out of one's suitcase in any scenario, and it was simple enough to do for him—but something about it seems to give him pause, and he stays where he is, sitting at the edge of the mattress, looking at her in that absolutely incomparable way he has, like he's caught a glimpse of something no one else ever sees. And perhaps he has.

"Thank you," he says, after a long, lingering moment, and reaches across the mattress to catch one of her hands, closing it up in his and squeezing her fingers. "Really, Pen. Thanks for putting my stuff away, and thanks for moving the truck, and thanks for letting me sleep. I was so goddamn tired. I don't wanna talk about it—I can't talk about it, yet—but I got the shit kicked outta me back home, and I…I dunno, I guess even after that, I figured that coming here, I'd be the one taking care of you. After Auckland. And everything. I guess I just never thought it might go the other way. Thank you, Pen. It means a lot."

"Darling," Penelope murmurs, and feels the beginnings of that awful, bittersweet ache in her heart at the thought of anything ever hurting him, but she swathes it away in the warmth of the love that swells up inside her, at how grateful he is that they're together, and how unafraid he is to tell her so. The sincerity in him is disarming, to the point that she doesn't know what to say, and the only thing she can think to do is push herself up from the mattress, so she can lean over the edge of the bed and kiss him. She remembers her manners at the last moment, and pauses just long enough to draw back, and add, "You're so very, very welcome."

Thankfully, that seems to suffice.


	50. pot and kettle

Gordon can cook, insofar as the act of cooking is defined as "causing food to be hot when it wasn't hot before". This is probably underselling his actual ability, at least a little bit, but he'd rather whatever he can rustle up from the pantry results in a pleasant surprise rather than an obvious disappointment.

It's been decided that they're both having dinner, and so they've adjourned from the bedroom into the kitchen, as a spring storm continues to roll over the plains around them. The lights are low and it's dark outside, and "cozy" is the only word for the evening thus far. It's past eight o'clock, and if Gordon's not quite tired any longer, he's pretty sure he'll still go back to bed whenever she does, just in the name of getting together on approximately the same sleep schedule.

The farmhouse kitchen is tucked around the corner from the front hallway, off the living room/dining room, divided from the main space by a breakfast bar and matching bar stools, upon the last of which Penelope perches, dainty and exquisite. She claims to be in her pajamas—these are a lacy pink satin camisole and matching pajama pants—but remains incongruently elegant within the farmhouse, the same way a pearl seems like it really doesn't belong in an oyster, so much as strung on a silk thread around the neck of a woman like Penelope. Dolce & Gabanna don't get a lot of play in Kansas as a whole. By her presence alone, Penelope probably classes up the entire state by a whole five percent.

And she sits at the end of the island counter as though they're in some private bar in some exotic locale, and he still needs to be flirted with before she can earn his attention. "You never did answer me," she says, leaning an elbow on the bartop and running a finger around the rim of the glass of water he'd offered her as he started investigating the kitchen. A couple ice cubes float in her glass, and she taps one with a fingertip so that it bobs below the surface, then pops back up again. "Can you cook?"

"I _did_ , and what I said was that what I can pass off as cooking is gonna depend on how high your standards are," Gordon reminds her, still evaluating the contents of the pantry, which is in a state that has him go on to add, "Currently most of our options are just whatever's still here and shelf-stable, because the fridge is empty except for a box of baking soda, and we only keep a couple weeks' worth of dry goods stocked when no one's gonna be around the place. I _was_ gonna go shopping, but _somebody_ thought I should take a nap."

He's only teasing, but it doesn't faze her anyway, and she sips her water and shrugs her shoulders, utterly indifferent. " _Somebody_ cares about you very much, and could tell you were very tired," she says lightly, untroubled by the accusation, though slightly reproachful as she goes on, "And darling, I'm not half so fussy as you seem to think I am. _Parker_ had no small part in raising me, so it wasn't all caviar and silver spoons. There's been plenty of cheese on toast and bangers and mash, shepherd's pie and sausage rolls. Apparently from the ages of four through six, I mainly subsisted on half-brewed builder's tea, biscuits, and mushy peas. Whatever you would've made if I'd gone back to sleep will be fine. I only ask because _I_ absolutely cannot cook to save my life."

She's very cute when she's annoyed. Gordon surveys the contents of the pantry, and shifts a few things around. "Right. In _that_ case, then it's either spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, or rice and canned chili."

She considers the offer, but only briefly before she decides. "Mmm. The former, I think. But—'spaghetti sauce'?"

The jar in the cupboard is a better known American brand, one of his personal favourites, and Gordon grabs it along with a box of spaghetti to let Penelope know what she's getting into, as he knocks the pantry door closed again with his hip, and displays both components of what's about to be an _extremely_ basic meal. "Uh, tomato sauce? Marinara?"

Penelope squints at him for a moment, and then at the jar, and then draws her own conclusion, "Oh…bolognese?"

She says it like she actually speaks Italian, and hell, probably she does. Despite earlier attempts to downplay what he can do in a culinary sense, Gordon _did_ spend the bulk of his adolescence supporting the sort of caloric intake that goes along with a rigorous athletic career, and if he knows his way around anything in the kitchen, it's probably pasta. "Nah, babe. Look, I just need to make it very clear—we are smack dab in the middle of the American midwest, and so what's gonna happen in this kitchen tonight is the kinda thing that would get me spat on in Naples. Flagellated in Florence. Shot and then chucked in a canal in Venice. This is gonna be about as far from good pasta as it's possible to get. I would make the Wizard of Oz joke, except you _are_ in Kansas now."

"I've never seen it," Penelope confesses, but there's a glint of amusement in her eyes. "But now you've made me curious, so please, do your worst. I'm betting it won't top the time Parker tried to feed me a fried Mars bar."

"All right. Don't say I didn't warn you."

All appropriate caveats and qualifiers provided, Gordon goes briskly about the business of putting a pot of water on to boil, and starts the jar of ketchupy red sauce to simmering on the back burner behind it. Penelope's already said that she'll be content with whatever he would have had anyway, but Gordon has the nostalgic advantage of having eaten (inhaled) more or less this exact meal every evening after swim practice, and so it's precisely his idea of comfort food. But he's got a good memory, and has mentally stored away the little list of items Penelope had rattled off, and if there are readily available American equivalents to be found within a fifty mile radius of the farmhouse, then tomorrow he intends to find them. For now, he hopes spaghetti will suffice. At least she won't go back to bed hungry.

"It'll be about fifteen minutes," he tells her, and crosses the room to the sink to wash out the jar, and then to the fridge just to double check how empty it is. This time he discovers that there's actually half a six-pack tucked away in the door, and despite the fact that he's not much for beer, this seems oddly appealing. "D'you mind if I have a beer?" he asks, glancing up over the top of the fridge door, to where Penelope still sits, sipping at her water and idly staring into space, asking her permission as a matter of courtesy.

"Feel free," she answers, still with that offhanded indifference that spikes on his radar as something to be curious about, if not necessarily concerned. "I don't much care for it, myself."

"Me neither, really," Gordon admits, though he still snags a bottle and joins her, leaning up against the opposite side of the the bar, hooking the lip of the bottlecap against the edge of the counter and giving it a sharp tap with the heel of his hand. The cap pops off with a hiss and he palms it, then lets it clatter across the countertop, where she pins it beneath a fingertip, then picks it up to turn it over, toying with it idly.

The night is dark and the lights are low and she's lovely. She's more beautiful than anyone he's ever sidled up to at a bar, with a drink in hand, with only one thing in mind. Leaning up against the counter across from her, permitted—encouraged, even—to just stare, enraptured, at the impeccable ease with which she moves through the utmost mundanity of life—as though she's not sitting at his kitchen counter in a satin camisole, her pale gold hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and so gorgeous he almost can't stand it. When her blue eyes flicker upward to catch him looking, she smiles in that particular way she has that makes his knees all weak and his heart all fluttery, and asks, "Can I tell you something absolutely wicked, my love?"

What kind of a question is that, even. It's a stupid thing to wonder, because obviously it's the sort of question with an immediate and eager answer, "Yes. Always. Literally any time. Shoot. Hit me."

Penelope laughs, and reaches across the counter to trace her fingertips around the wrist of his free hand, teasing at the edges of one of the bracelets he wears. The gesture seems playful, though her voice is low and sultry and serious as a heart attack as she informs him, "I can still smell sex on both of us."

This sort of statement demands a fairly substantial swig of beer. Gordon still doesn't even _like_ beer, he just needs a couple seconds to cover for the fact that he doesn't have the first idea what the hell he's supposed to say to her when she says something like _that_.

And she says things like that a lot more often than he ever figured she was supposed to, and even months later, somehow he never seems to expect it. He always ends up uncharacteristically flustered, even though he knows he's being toyed with, teased and tormented by someone who'd taken an alarmingly short time to discover just where exactly all his buttons are, and exactly how to press them.

" _Right_. Um…right, cool. _Cool_. Awesome, _great_. Uh. _Right_. How 'bout them pregnant lady powers, huh?" he jokes weakly, eventually, stammering and stumbling and hoping that he's kept the lights in the kitchen low enough that she won't notice he's blushing, suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed. "Uh. But…uh, sorry, I guess? I can go shower…"

"Oh no, my love. Not necessary." She just shakes her head, still smiling to herself. "Don't trouble yourself. I'm really only teasing. It's just what I said earlier—I can smell _everything_ right now, and now that I've noticed, I can't stop noticing. I could smell the gas from across the room when you turned the stove on. I think I can even smell your water coming up to boil. When I first got back to the manor, Bertie's breath very nearly left me retching. Poor thing, he didn't understand why I didn't want any kisses."

Gordon's pathetically grateful for the change of subject, and seizes on it with perhaps more vigour than he might have otherwise. "Aw, I was wondering if you were gonna bring him or not. He would've been welcome. Sherbet's a good dog." This is all technically true, but deep down it's possible that Gordon's thankful not to have to compete with a teacup pug for Penelope's affections. Sherbet's fine, but Gordon's landed in Kansas feeling atypically selfish, especially with regard to Penelope. "I like Sherbet," he adds, as though to make up for the fact that he's happier for his absence than his presence.

Thankfully, Penelope doesn't seem tremendously bothered, as she shrugs. The bottlecap remains pinned between her first two fingers, and with her thumb she rotates it slowly between them. "I'm reasonably fond of Sherbet myself, darling, but he would've been just dreadfully underfoot. I sent him along with Parker, up to Baltersan."

If this is a name Gordon's heard before, he doesn't remember what it's attached to, and he repeats it, stumbling a little on the roll of the accent she'd applied to the word, "…Baltersan?"

Penelope nods. "Mmm. Family estate, just the most terribly drafty old castle up in Scotland. My father lives there most of the year."

"Oh—right, right." Gordon nods as though this is something he's being reminded of when actually, perhaps rather damningly, he can't seem to remember offhand if he's ever even _met_ Penelope's father. This is certainly the first he's heard about a _castle_ , never mind whether or not he's met the man who lives in it. Gordon's about ninety percent sure he must have, at some function or event of his father's, but Lord Hugh must not have made much of an impression. Maybe that's on purpose. Maybe that's some sort of spy thing. Doesn't really matter, but it does beg the question—

"Does…uh…does he know? Your dad? About—that you're pregnant?"

There's no hesitation in Penelope's answer, just a shake of her head, and a plain and a simply stated, "No."

This begs another question. "…does he know about _us_?"

Penelope just smiles and shakes her head again. "Still my little secret. I doubt he'd know even if we _had_ managed to hit the tabloids."

"…Right."

Gordon makes a conscious, deliberate decision not to read too much into the fact that she's asked him to tell his family, but _hasn't_ told her own father. He realizes that he knows almost nothing about Penelope's relationship with her dad. Gordon knows the man exists; knows that he was involved in some flavour of spycraft during the war—hence Jeff Tracy's connection with him, and his subsequent choice of Lady Penelope as IR's London Agent—and as of just now he knows that Lord Hugh lives somewhere in Scotland, but the rest is just hopeful guesstimations.

So, that's maybe not great.

But before he can start to get properly concerned about Lord Hugh, Penelope seems to sense his trepidation, and lightly rests a hand on his arm, patting his wrist and offering another reassuring little smile. "Don't worry about my father, Gordon. I'll handle him."

This implies that her father will need to be _handled_ upon the delivery of this news, and Gordon has to add this to the list of things he's deciding not to think about right now. He wracks his brain for even the vaguest impression of Lord Hugh Creighton-Ward, and continues to come up utterly blank. "D'you know if I've even ever met him before?"

Penelope shakes her head again. "Not likely. He knew your father during the war, but he's _very_ retired, and has been for nearly my entire lifetime, and there are reasons why I haven't told him yet. I don't want to trouble you with them. But for now, Gordon, please don't worry about my father." She glances over his shoulder and past him, and adds, "Your attention would probably be better spent worrying about the pot you've left boiling over on the stove."

A watched pot never boils, and Gordon's been ignoring the one on the stovetop long enough that he can hear it start bubbling over, hissing and spitting as it sputters over the rim of the pot to fizzle away as it meets the flame below. It demands his attention, but it's also a convenient diversion—though not quite enough to keep him from wondering just what about her reasons he might find troubling.

* * *

He doesn't yet know it, but the reason she hasn't told her father about her pregnancy is the same exact same reason that she can't explain to Gordon. Or won't, rather, or at least not yet. Penelope is a great believer in things happening at the appropriate times, and the time isn't right to tell Gordon that her own mother had died tragically in childbirth, before Penelope even drew her first breath. It's a terrible story, and not one that she means to ruin the evening with. She's not sure when, or if, she plans to tell him. It might become the sort of de facto secret she quietly keeps, until asked about it. It's a difficult subject to breach out of the blue and without warning.

Gordon's gotten quiet on the other side of the kitchen, going about the business of assembling a late supper for the pair of them, stirring tomato sauce and draining pasta with a greater degree of intensity than either task probably requires. Watching him through half-lidded eyes, with her elbow propped on the counter and her chin propped on her hand, Penelope can tell that he's found something to worry about, though she'd told him not to. But she can't quite summon the energy necessary to scold him about it, and so she leaves him be.

Even accounting for her late afternoon nap and even though none of today's demands were especially strenuous, Penelope still feels worn out and weary, fatigued in a way she's beginning to associate with her pregnancy, as strange as it is to acknowledge.

Of course, she's also got the anaemia and the time change and the lateness of the hour and all other manner of excuses to be tired, and so she can back burner the reality, along with the truth about her mother, for later. They need to talk, both of them know it. There've been a few little feints and overtures, but this latest exchange is the closest they've come, since Auckland, to addressing the situation. And Penelope's content to put the discussion off for a little while longer. Until morning, at least. Later still, if she has her way.

She straightens up at the counter as Gordon finishes dishing up a pair of plates, as simple as they are with nothing more than spaghetti and sauce upon them, and crosses the kitchen to set hers down in front of her. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Gordon cautions, and his own plate lands opposite hers on the countertop, and he leans up against the other side of the bar again. "I don't know if it's any good, and I'm _kinda_ not kidding, 'cuz I ate _exactly_ this, pretty much every day of my life for like, half a decade, back when I was still swimming. I have a hardcoded Pavlovian response that works out to 'swim good, get calories'. I don't even know what it actually tastes like anymore."

"I"m sure it's fine," Penelope answers evenly, unfazed by any of his attempts to discourage her appetite. "Really, darling, I can't imagine—"

Penelope stops as her breath catches slightly.

Despite the degree to which her sense of smell has heightened, somehow the scent of tomato sauce doesn't actually hit until she glances down at the plate sitting in front of her. And it's entirely innocuous, an utterly inoffensive dish of exactly what he'd said it was—long, pale spaghetti noodles topped with a thin film of bright red sauce, flecked with little irregular specks of darkness meant to represent herbs and/or spices, slightly and uniformly textured to whatever degree had been focus-grouped into a final product by whatever monolithic corporate entity had been responsible for its production. It's all still piping hot, steam rising from the surface and carrying the faintest scent of the salty starch of freshly boiled pasta—but overwhelmed by the coppery, metallic odor of cooked, processed, canned tomatoes.

And perhaps what's most arresting about the moment that follows is the way the room seems to tilt off the appropriate axis, as some hideous hormonal or chemical or biological misfire in her brain decides that she is _not_ , in fact, looking at a perfectly innocent dish of pasta and sauce, but a twisted mass of viscera, slick with gore. And the smell of all that bright, clotted red is too close a cousin to what exists in her memory as the scent of blood. It's the span of only a second or so in which she's frozen, fallen silent mid-sentence and gone terribly, obviously still. It must be transparently evident that something is wrong, because the next thing she hears is the sound of her name, phrased like it's a question, and the next thing she feels is the way Gordon's fingertips brush the ridge of her knuckles.

And the next thing she knows is that she needs to leave, _immediately_.

She'd drawn a breath and hasn't been able to let it out for fear of drawing another, but it leaves her in a rush, along with the last vestiges of civility, as she gasps, " _please, excuse me_ ," and bolts from the bar.

The barstool she'd sat upon tips over and crashes to the floor with the urgent indignity of her exit, but Penelope can't even begin to care. The master bedroom and associated master bathroom are directly across the broad expanse of floorspace that leads from the kitchen into the living room/dining room, a doorway into cool, dim darkness that Penelope slams closed behind her. She's already stumbling on her way into the bedroom, on her knees as she crosses the threshold into the bathroom, where the tiles are cool through the satin of her pajamas and will set her to trembling, once she finishes throwing up into the toilet.

The sensation is overwhelming, at once alien and horribly familiar, and bound to a reality that she's meant to have long since gotten past. Even now, it activates some deeply buried, primal part of her back-brain, that ties the action to a sense of reward, accomplishment, grim and twisted pleasure.

It all seems to take far longer than she wishes it would, with what seems like a merciful end in the middle, and then a rather more vigorous reprise, at the end of which—when it finally _is_ over—there's nothing left to do but break down sobbing.

Gordon turns up only a few moments later, with a quiet knock on the door that doesn't request her permission to enter so much as announces his intention to do so. She has the automatic impulse to curl up, hiding herself away in utter horror as the door creaks slowly open. But of course the toilet is tucked between the bathroom counter and the bathroom wall, facing the bathtub, and there's nowhere for her to go, though she still presses her back against the wainscoting and cowers there, viscerally upset and deeply embarrassed, even if it's only Gordon.

If he senses her abject mortification, he disregards it entirely. The first thing he does is place her half-full glass of water on the bathroom countertop, ready and waiting. Then he crouches down, but cautiously, not crowding too close, as though attempting to approach a cornered and wounded animal. He gives her a few more moments to adjust to his presence before clearing his throat and making a careful, gentle little joke, "So I guess 'morning sickness' is a bit of a misnomer, hey?"

Obviously that's what this is, but Penelope hadn't entirely made the connection of her own accord, and hearing it stated just sets her sobbing even harder, bile still clinging to the inside of her mouth, coating the backs of her teeth, foul and acrid. It shatters her ability to distance herself from the reality of her pregnancy, and drives it all home again. She feels awful, suddenly exhausted and weak and shaken and chilled, when only minutes earlier she'd been fine. A little fatigued, maybe, and hungry, but otherwise fine. No longer.

Between the darkness of the bathroom and the tears blurring her vision, Penelope can't see Gordon, but she feels it when he edges closer, and when he reaches out to replace the strap of her camisole from where it's slipped from her shoulder. His touch drifts down her arm, squeezing her elbow briefly on its way, before calloused fingertips caress her forearm, and then he takes her hand and softly tells her, "It's okay, Pen."

He's probably right, and of course this is a ridiculous thing to cry about, though it's not as though that's stopped her, and she still shakes her head, frustrated and embarrassed, and furthermore, _deeply_ unaccustomed to embarrassment. It is categorically not okay.

He disagrees, but kindly, as he reassures her, "Yeah, but it is, though. Here, c'mon…"

He doesn't hand her the glass of water so much as he holds it out and then lifts her hand to wrap her fingers around it, coaxing and cajoling until her tears start to abate and she takes a sip, and then a proper swallow once her mouth is rinsed clean, and after a few deep breaths, she feels slightly better.

"That was horrid," she says, finally, and her voice comes out weak and a little hoarse. She returns the half-empty glass back to Gordon, who returns it to the counter, and then reaches out to take her hands again, while she remains seated where she is with her back to the wall. "That was _awful_."

"I know, Penny. I'm sorry."

Penelope shudders, and the convulsive little shiver catches on the chill seeping into her, and becomes proper trembling as she realizes just how cold she's gotten—and how tired. Her appetite has vanished entirely, and all she wants is to go back to bed, to curl up beneath the sheets and blankets and be warm and safe and held again. She needs to get off the floor.

Something about her body language must telegraph her intention to get back to her feet, because before she can even grasp the edge of the bathtub to pull herself clumsily off the floor, Gordon bounces nimbly upright and catches her elbow, helping her the rest of the way up. The change in posture makes her briefly dizzy as her blood pressure drops, anaemia flaring up again, and she finds she needs the support as she stands, leaning into him, and allowing herself to be folded into an insistent embrace.

It's extremely foolish, but with her head against his chest and his heartbeat in her ear; his arms around her and one of his hands against the small of her back, Penelope feels tears start to well up in her eyes again. One or two of these slip down her cheeks, along the side of her nose, to be wicked away by the soft cotton jersey of his t-shirt as she lets out a tremulous little sigh and wraps her arms even tighter around his waist, sniffling softly.

"I'm sorry…" she starts, automatically, but already expecting the interruption as he tenses and cuts her off—

" _No_. No, Pen, don't…don't be. Okay? Please. You can't help it. It's just how it goes and it's shitty, yeah, but no harm done. You're all right. And I don't mind." His hold loosens slightly and he eases back, so that he can lift a hand to gently cradle her face and then gently kiss her forehead, as she sheds a few more silly little tears. But despite her foolishness, he's solid and practical as he brushes a few loose strands of hair back from her face, and then suggests, "You wanna go sit down, maybe? I can go put the kettle on, do you maybe want some tea?"

Penelope nods, but doesn't break away, leaning into him again instead, so that he helps her out of the bathroom and back over to the bed. The sheets are still a tangled mess, and cool against her skin as she sits down, resting her back against the headboard. The window is still open, but squeaks slightly as Gordon closes it and draws the curtains. It was already dark, but it grows darker, and she closes her eyes and cuddles down against the pillows, as the sound of the storm grows muffled.

The floorboards creak beneath his feet as he crosses the room, and the springs of the mattress squeak as he sits down at the edge of the bed. When he reaches out to take her hand again, it's like he's possessed of the only warmth left in the world.

And even though he hasn't said anything yet, or made any overt attempt to fuss and fret, even without looking, she can feel him right on the verge of bursting with the impulse to look after her, restrained only by the explicit awareness that she doesn't _like_ to be looked after.

"Tea?" he tries again, puppyish and hopeful, trying to sneak this by her, as though this is the solution to any problem or difficulty faced by the English. To be fair, he isn't far wrong. "Grandma always kept peppermint and chamomile around. There might be something with ginger."

"Chamomile," she acquiesces, just to give him something to do. He does always seem to feel better when he's got something to do.

"Sugar? Honey?"

"Both. Lots. And a little lemon."

" _Oh_ , you mean in the tea, I was just trying to get your attention."

Penelope opens one eye and looks up at him, catches sight of the beginning of half a hopeful little grin, which of course leaves her no choice but to banter back. "How sweet."

"I try."

"You'll do."

At this he lifts her hand, presses a kiss against her fingers, and answers, "Yeah, you bet I will. Whatever I can. Whatever you want, Pen, just…please, ask me? Please, _please_ don't try and stiff-upper-lip your way through this, because it'll kill me. I _will_ die."

Penelope can't help some mild amusement at the melodrama. "Is that a threat?"

Gordon shrugs. "Just a promise. I haven't got the words to explain what it does to me when you're hurting, Pen. I've wrecked my shit pretty hard in the past, but _none_ of it compares to what it's like when you cry. Honest, Penny, if there's ever anything I can do, just say so."

He is just dreadfully sweet. And like always, he does seem to really mean the things that he says, because he says them with such obvious and wholehearted honesty that there's no room for even a practiced cynic to doubt the truth of them. Penelope doesn't have the words to explain just what exactly happens to _her_ , when he's so perfectly sincere.

"Then come to bed and hold me," she says, for the second time today. "And to hell with the bloody tea."


	51. sunlight and scars

Morning comes, but not before Penelope does.

By the time dawn breaks they're both curled up together in a nest of disarrayed bed sheets, undressed yet again, and basking in an afterglow that seems to radiate from the eastern sky, and there's absolutely no indication that Penelope feels even remotely unwell after the sudden onset of last night's illness. Quite the contrary, if the way she'd been determined to start the day is any indication.

Not that Gordon's complaining.

Now she lies on her stomach, possibly dozing back off to sleep, curled up around her pillow and facing the other way. He lies on his back, wide awake, watching her as the quality of light in the bedroom slowly changes.

The curve of her spine by the light of morning is a goddamn work of art, and he can't help but lift a hand to run his fingers over her bare skin. Tracing his fingertips back up along the hourglass curve of her torso, he smiles to himself as she gives a pleasurable little shiver beneath the touch of his hand.

Then his thumb brushes over a place that feels different from the rest of her, and it takes him a moment to realize that it's because there's an unmistakable scar running along the curve of her ribcage, what once must've been a gash about four or five inches long. The skin is a different kind of smooth, raised and puckered slightly, and he can feel the places where stitches would've pierced her flesh, pulled the edges of a wound back together.

This isn't technically the first morning they've spent together, nor is it the first time he's seen her unselfconsciously naked. But every other occasion has been in circumstances with low lights or limited time or life-altering changes to their relationship. Or all of the above. This is the first time he's had the necessary leisure to just lie beside her, staring at every detail of her perfect, gorgeous body. And now that he does, it's the first time he's noticed anything like _this_.

The notion that Penelope could have _scars_ lands in his brain like a chunk of jagged, searing hot shrapnel. Especially a scar like this one. With his attention drawn to it, suddenly he can't think of anything else, and before he realizes he's done so, he's sat up to lean over her and examine it properly. It's possible he's gotten closer than is socially acceptable, even in an already intimate setting. Possibly it's the impulse of the first responder that has him catching her elbow and holding her arm up so he can get a better look, his fingertips probing gently over the length of the faint, faded scar.

If Penelope was sleeping, or trying to, she's currently been made the victim of a very rude awakenening. She twists from her stomach onto her side—rolling over to stare up at him, somehow more curious than bewildered or outraged. As is probably typical of a lady of her poise and stature, she takes the sudden and seemingly random scrutiny of her armpit with a prodigious level of grace, and her voice is bright and somehow politely unsurprised as she comments, "…well! This is…novel…"

The way she takes notice makes him realize just how awkward this is, and he lowers her arm sheepishly, "You've got a scar," he informs her, and at the last second manages not to make it sound like an accusation. It occurs to him a little too late that this abrupt, intense examination of a typically private piece of her anatomy might be just a _little bit_ gauche, but he's in it now, thanks to a combination of his fascination with her and his occasionally poor impulse control. But by some supreme act of mercy in a usually indifferent universe, she seems tolerantly amused by his interest and not rightfully offended.

"I've a great many scars, darling," Penelope answers, blithely unconcerned. She rolls the rest of the way over beside him, yawning and stretching and then reaching upward. Her hand goes with an impressive immediacy to a particularly nasty gouge that mars his collarbone, where he'd been caught by the tip of an industrial sized hook, trailing from the back of a listing Canadian fishing trawler during a rescue. This was an incident which had subsequently produced the sorriest fisherman Gordon had ever met. Her fingertips gently trace the considerably uglier edges of this scar and she murmurs, "It's not like you can talk."

This was an injury bad enough that the nerves there aren't what they used to be, and he can only feel the touch of her fingers along the edges, not when they graze the scar itself. "I mean, yeah, sure. That's just—that's just an occupational hazard, though. For me. In my line of work. But _that_ is just a hell of a scar, though. Was it…what, it's not surgery, or something?"

 _Now_ she laughs, and it's a sudden, genuine sort of sound, though he's not trying to be funny. "Of the sort done by an angry Slavic gun runner with a justifiable grudge and a _very_ big knife."

"…a _gun runner_ went after you with a _knife_?"

There's a certain smugness in her tone at the level of shock he hasn't been able to moderate, and she coyly demures, "Well, he'd recently been deprived of all his guns."

With the added context, it becomes apparent that Penelope has a five inch scar carved across her ribcage because someone had made a serious effort to _stab her_ , and hadn't entirely failed in the attempt. " _Jesus_."

He's past the point of even _trying_ to dial back his sheer horror at the idea, and apparently this delights her, as she sits herself up in bed beside him, casually pulling her hair back over her shoulders, as she goes on, "If we're talking about scars then it was Je _sús_ , actually, but he's the one who shot me."

"You've been _shot_?" That one he just doesn't believe. Gordon is not a natural liar, and neither is he especially good at telling when others are lying. The fact that she's so cavalier about this kind of thing is playing absolute hell with his ability to parse these statements. But it's Penelope, and so he's caught and torn between the dichotomy of automatically wanting to trust her, and yet not being able to comprehend what she's just told him. There's nothing like a bullet hole anywhere on her perfect pretty body, and he's actively staring at her now. " _Where_?"

"Columbia."

That wasn't what he meant, but it raises another, equally valid question. "What the hell were you doing that got you _shot_ in _Columbia_?"

She smiles again, and not for the first time, Gordon's reminded of just how exquisitely subtle her control of her expression is. _This_ smile is slow and sly and secretive, and associated with a gently scolding tap of her finger against his lips, shutting him up as she answers, "I'm afraid that's classified. Let a girl have her secrets."

That's probably fair. More than probably, of course it's perfectly fair. He knows it about her, that she'd have secrets, because of course she does, secrets are part of her job. Her job is so secretive that sometimes he forgets she even _has_ one. That she has a secret knife wound and has been secretly shot make him feel twisted up and unhappy inside, reacting on a visceral level to things that have happened far enough in the past that all that's left of either incident is the silvered-dead scar tissue, and stories she'll tease him with, but can't (or won't) actually tell.

And because he's the sort of person whose mouth occasionally undergoes an acute disconnection from his brain, he can't seem to help but tell her so, sounding just as troubled as he feels, as he says, "—I guess there's a lot I don't know about you."

Of course, he doesn't _mean_ to sound quite so dejected and despondent when he says it, but her cornflower blue eyes widen immediately with concern and one of her hands comes up to catch his face, before he can drop his gaze away from hers. "Oh, but darling," she protests, and her smile is in her voice now, just before she leans over and presses a kiss against his cheek, just a sweet little peck of her rosebud lips, bowing her face close as she murmurs in his ear, "Don't you think that's the exciting part?"

She makes a convincing argument, for someone who hasn't actually made an argument. "Well…"

Now she leans against him, her bare skin cool where it touches his, as she tilts her head against his shoulder. "What's so terribly surprising about me, so far?" she inquires, serious for the first time since the conversation started. The playful edge has left her voice, and it's a genuine question.

"Well, the scar as long as my hand kinda threw me for a loop."

She dismisses this immediately. "That's just your abject failure to have the remotest idea what it is I do for a living, dearest. Which is rather the point, honestly. I'd be tremendously bad at my job if anyone knew I was actually doing it."

This isn't the first time she's said something like this, and he doesn't understand it any better this time around. "Did you _really_ get shot in Columbia?"

Penelope shrugs. "The possibility exists that it was actually Venezuela, we were _very_ deep in the jungle, and it's not as though drug lords give much thought to which borders they're crossing when I'm chasing them. And I _say_ 'shot', but truthfully it was a riccochet, and it only grazed me."

This is not actually as comforting as she must think it is, and Gordon still winces at the thought. In absence of any evidence of a bullet ever hitting her in any capcity, he reaches out to gently touch the scar along her ribcage once again, and wonder if it suffers the same lack of sensation as the one that crosses his collarbone. "Did it hurt?" he asks softly, and probably sets a new record for just exactly how stupid a question can possibly be. And so early in the morning, too.

"Oh, naturally it hurt like anything, darling. But you needn't worry." At this she reaches up and gently pats his cheek. Now she's coy and flirty and once more exactly the sort of person that one would never expect to get stabbed by slavic gun runners or shot by Columbian (Venezuelan?) drug lords. She's smiling again, almost teasing, as she assures him, "I'm _very_ tough."

"Oh, well, yeah. Obviously." That, at least, is infinitely more believable, and he cracks a grin in answer. By the light of morning through the bedroom window, Penelope is dainty and petite, beautiful and ladylike, and definitely one of the toughest people he's ever known, even outside the knowledge that she's been both shot and stabbed. "I mean, 'course you are. You're a buck-twenty soaking wet, five-three on a good day, and you're probably tougher than I am by a long shot. Not _even_ joking. Hell, when I broke my back—"

"… _Excuse me_ , when you did _what_?"

* * *

 _Her_ expression of shock and horror is so abrupt as to stop him mid-sentence, as she straightens up where she sits with an actual audible gasp.

" _You_ broke your _back_." Penelope means it as a question, but it comes out as an accusation, and rather sharper than she'd wanted it to. All the softness of the morning has dissolved away, and now she kneels on the mattress beside him, barely restraining herself from forcibly turning him around where he sits, so as to get a better look the state of his spine.

"…yeah?" Despite his obvious distress at her disclosure of comparable injuries, he seems faintly bemused by the fact that she's so startled by this, and Penelope realizes with a twist of irony that this is what her own flippancy must have felt like from the other side. "You didn't know that?"

What's more surprising than discovering that he's ever broken his back to begin with is the way he seems surprised that she didn't already know this about him. Which makes her wonder whether or not she was supposed to, and just when exactly she would've been told. What started out as playful banter—just small talk to prolong lingering bliss of the morning's intimacy, gently teasing him with hints about her own checkered past— has now turned, quite abruptly, into an interrogation, so she can determine of the facts of the matter. _Who_ and _What_ have already been established, and she rattles off the rest of her questions with urgency.

"When?"

Thankfully he seems happy to answer them, promptly and clearly. "Eight years ago, same year as when I won the games. I was seventeen."

This, at least, is an explanation for why she hasn't heard about this before; it was a few years before she'd met him, or any other member of his family. "Where?"

"In Aspen. We've got like a ski lodge type thing up in the mountains, we used to go up every Christmas. You and me should go sometime."

That sounds lovely, but is irrelevant at the moment. " _How_?"

"Snowboarding. Backcountry stuff down the side of a mountain. I jumped off a ridge and landed badly. Like _really_ badly. On a rock I didn't see, which is bad for snowboards and very, _very_ bad for your lumbar spine. Then I wiped out and broke a bunch of stuff." He pauses, and then rubs at the back of his neck, almost a little sheepish as he admits, "I don't…really remember a lot about how it happened. I mean, I've been told. And I have bits and pieces, just not the whole thing. D'you _really_ not know about how I did that, though? I thought _everybody_ knew about that."

"Why would _I_ have known about that?"

She doesn't mean to make it sound so much like it's his fault that she doesn't. Her outrage, if it can be accurately described as outrage, isn't with him so much as it is with her own ignorance. That Gordon is unaware of the various plights and perils she's endured over the course of her career is a truism by design, a necessity. That she doesn't know this about _him_ makes her wonder if perhaps she just hasn't been paying enough attention.

The unintentional note of reprimand in her tone is enough to embarrass him, and he shrugs, abashed. "I mean! I dunno, maybe you wouldn't—it was a long time ago, I guess it doesn't really come up that often, these days. I got better. Obviously. But like, back when it happened—it was the year I won gold, and afterward it was pretty clear I wasn't ever gonna compete at that level again. Early days, they didn't even know if I was ever gonna _walk_ again. Gold medal Olympian, that's kinda like a big deal. And I dunno…what with who my dad was, and with what I'd just done at the games—it hit at least a couple news cycles. Locally, for sure. Maybe at the national level in, like, competitive swimming circles. Like a year later I got in Sports Illustrated about it; I wasn't even all the way healed up yet. Hell, there's probably a copy around the house somewhere; I could probably dig it up, if you wanted more details."

Penelope does not want to read about this in Sports Illustrated. "Does a copy of Sports Illustrated have a more thorough accounting than what you can give me personally?"

Gordon grins. "Well! You're not the only one here who's been on the front of a magazine, is all I'm saying. And it would've been fresher, back then. I barely remember what I talked about, besides the fact that my whole Olympic deal was basically over before it even got started."

"Because when you were seventeen, you broke your back while snowboarding in Aspen."

"Right."

"And I had absolutely no idea," Penelope marvels, and can't help leaning over, positioning herself to get a better look at his spine. There are plenty of reasons why she never would've noticed before—not the least of which is how rarely before now she'd ever seen him less than fully dressed—but now that it's been pointed out, there's no mistaking the scar running vertically up from the base of his spine. About as long as her hand beside it, with four smaller marks running parallel, long ago incisions. Older, by her reckoning, than the scar on her ribcage, and distressing to the point that she makes a soft little noise of sympathy as her fingers trace each ridge and divot.

He leans back and interrupts her probing, reclining so he can look up at her with that familar crooked grin, so that it's perfectly apparent that he's perfectly all right, as he reassures her, "I'm okay _now_ , Pen."

She shifts slightly where she sits, and pillows and blankets are prudently redistributed, so that his head remains comfortably pillowed in her lap, she can stroke her fingers through his hair while they chat. "But you weren't, then."

"Well, no, I wasn't. I mean, I was _really_ fucked up—the broken back was just the start of it, I was _way_ hypothermic by the time they got me to a hospital. But then if it'd been a little warmer, I _probably_ would've died. I hit my head hard enough that they had to put me in a coma for like a week; I broke my leg in two places, broke my collarbone, cracked a few ribs, popped my shoulder outta joint—but besides all that, I _completely_ trashed my entire athletic career, because I did something _phenomenally_ fucking stupid."

Penelope winces at the list of injuries, rattled off as though they were nothing of consequence. Eight years since, perhaps they aren't, but eight years ago he would've been almost still a child. She's not even sure she can imagine him at seventeen years old—Gordon's always been possessed of a certain boyishness, but he's been an adult the entire time she's known him, even if she hasn't necessarily always thought of him that way. He's certainly an adult now, and it twinges at her heart to think of him as young and broken and facing an uncertain future.

Still, she wants to know what exactly he means.

"What happened?"

"Mm." It's not like him to be reticent—though their time together so far has certainly seen him flatly refuse to answer some of her questions, and he's been obviously cagey around certain subjects—and he squints up at her, evaluating, before he asks, "D'you wanna know the whole story?"

"You've made me very curious."

"Well, but except I don't wanna upset you. It gets kinda grim in a couple places."

Penelope pretends to pout at this, mocking offense as she huffs, "You won't _upset_ me. I've been _shot_ and it didn't upset me. I take a lot of upsetting."

Gordon is rarely reticent and he's also rarely patronizing, but the look he gives her now definitely follows a pointed pause, before he points out, "Pen, honey, I've seen you cry more often in the past three days than I have in the past five _years_. You're _pregnant_. I'm not sure even _you_ know what upsets you right now, and I'm sure as hell not taking any chances."

This is entirely reasonable, admirably sensitive, and probably correct—and Penelope still needs to restrain herself for reaching for the glass of water he'd left for her on the bedside table, and dousing him with it, as punishment for the high crime of treating her with anything that resembles delicacy. Instead she shrugs and feigns diffidence, attempting some minor reverse-psychology, "I think I can handle it. Of course, if it would be upsetting for _you_ to talk about, then we can certainly change the subject—"

Gordon's equally as dismissive of her concerns. "Nah, it's been eight years. I've mostly worked my way through the upsetting parts, I'm over it. And if you say you're fine, I believe you. But…"

"…But?"

He pauses again, hesitating as he stumbles over some unanticipated internal conflict, and then cautiously hedges, "Well, it's a long story."

"It's not as though we don't have the time." Penelope directs a meaningful and obvious glance around the bedroom, all aglow with the soft sunlight of morning. The room is pleasantly warm, to the point that it's been perfectly comfortable for her to sit up in bed without a stitch of clothing on, even if Gordon's felt it necessary to pull the blankets back up, where he still lies with his head in her lap. It's lovely and idyllic, and if it's not in Gordon's nature to spend an entire day lounging idly in bed, then this is just something Penelope will have to teach him. "Is there somewhere else you wanted to be?"

"I mean, nah. No. I just…hadn't really thought about it. Now I'm kinda running through it in my head, and…and I dunno, Pen…"

Doubt creeps into her, as he becomes preoccupied by some suddenly interesting region of the ceiling overhead, trailing off and falling silent, obviously troubled by something. Penelope pauses to reevaluate her level of interest. "What's wrong?"

"It's not really a story about me."

This is a cryptic statement to be delivered with such conviction, and with such an edge of bitterness that he almost sounds angry, resentful. Penelope's not sure she can recall any point in the continuum of their acquaintance when she can recall Gordon ever really sounding _angry_. Annoyed, perhaps. Irritated. Frustrated, certainly; she's gone out of her way on more than one occasion to frustrate him on purpose. Recently, even. But this is different.

And perhaps there was some clue in his manner or some hint she should have picked up on that might make sense of what he means—but if so, Penelope seems to have missed it, and so she's forced to ask the obvious question, "Why is the story of how you broke your back _not_ a story about you?"

His answering sigh is one of those tremendous, defeated sounding things, another example of the way his emotions are big and unsubtle. And when he goes on to explain, there's a strange note of sadness, bitter regret, in his voice, as he answers, "Because it's a story about Scott."


	52. past and present

It had been too near to the late afternoon fall of darkness for one more run down the windward side of a back country slope, but when Gordon asked, Scott said yes anyway.

And since Scott had been the one to say yes, there was technically an interpretation of events where what happened to Gordon was Scott's fault.

Both of them know this, but Gordon only knows because Scott told him, and Scott only told him because he blames himself, even though Gordon doesn't, and wouldn't have even if he'd remembered getting Scott's permission. It's possible he would have gone anyway, even if Scott had sensibly sided with Virgil and said no. If Scott blames himself for the fact that Gordon got hurt in the first place, then any guilt he feels should necessarily be canceled out by the fact that he'd also, objectively, saved Gordon's life.

Most of what he knows about what happened is a pieced together accounting of what other people—Scott and Virgil, mostly—have told him. His own memories of the actual accident are too patchy, too broken into jagged pieces by the merciful amnesia of trauma; just sharp flashes of clear sensation intercut with periods of deep, insensible darkness. And they don't begin from the decision to attempt one last run down the slope, but rather from the enormous, gunshot crack his snowboard had made, snapping in half beneath him as it hit the rocky edge of a drifted over ridge, hidden by a trick of the falling light and shifting shadows, instead of the powdery, forgiving snow that blanketed the rest of the slope.

It had been a perfect day up to that point, apparently, though he doesn't remember anything of the perfect part that came before. Perfect weather, perfect snow, and the three of them perfectly happy—right up until the moment of that gunshot crack, and a landing so painful Gordon had blacked out from the sheer shock of it.

From there, Gordon's been told, he fell another couple dozen feet, rolling bodily down the slope, though it was that initial impact through his board that had done the damage to the lowest part of his spine. Two shattered lumbar vertebrae, and the subsequent swelling had put enough pressure on the nerves that he couldn't feel anything below the waist–certainly not the two places where his left leg had broken—though he'd felt the fractured ribs, collarbone, and dislocated shoulder just fine.

At least, once he'd come back around from the first few minutes of unconsciousness that the associated concussion had caused.

He'd returned to the awareness of absolute agony, cradled in his own little custom-made impact crater, and the first gasping breath he'd taken had been full of the cold, clean, mineral scent of snow. He remembers a trickle of warm, sticky wetness freezing on his face as blood dripped from his nose, the taste of it at the back of his throat, seeping between his back teeth. He remembers his vision blurring with tears, rendering the sight of the sky overhead into an abstraction of all the colours of sunset. And the sound of both his brothers' voices echoing the refrain of their desperation off the surrounding slopes, but distorted and distant, like he was lying at the bottom of a swimming pool, and not shattered on the side of a mountain.

Scott with the skill and the sense to hop back on his snowboard and coast down the broader, more forgiving curve of the leeward slope to where his little brother had landed. Virgil, helplessly floundering through an unbroken crust of knee deep snow, halfway falling the last few feet himself. And Gordon, lying utterly broken in agony on an indifferent mountainside.

What Gordon knows about what happened next constitutes a peculiar blend of what he actually remembers, what he's invented in his head to match up to what his brothers have told him, and a strange, disconnected inventory of thoughts that had drifted into his brain, over the course of the hour or so of he'd spent on the mountainside, flirting with the leading edge of death.

Of all of it, or at least of what happened on the mountainside, Scott is the focal point of most of what Gordon can remember. Virgil was there too, and Virgil did plenty, but it's Scott who stands out. Everything Virgil had done was practical, essential, and equally as life-saving—calling the local rescue agency with their GPS coordinates, flagging down the rescue chopper that arrived an entire hour later, busting into his back pack for first aid supplies, flares, a flashlight—but it's Scott who remains fixed in Gordon's memory.

Scott at twenty-three was a force of nature, the embodiment of tall, dark, and handsome. Scott at twenty-three was already everything Gordon still aspires to at twenty-five: effortlessly cool and calm and confident. Already a pilot, and though still early in his air force career, already off to a prodigious start. Six years between them, and even with his own not-inconsiderable accomplishments behind him, at seventeen, Gordon still stood in awe of his eldest brother.

It's hard to tell if it's a memory, or something he's only invented because it's what he believes he should remember, and can imagine—but there's an image pinned in his mind of Scott, with his blue eyes fierce and clear in the last of the daylight reflected off the snow. With frost riming his dark hair with streaks of silver, and making him look uncannily like their father. With his hands bare and his gloves thrown aside, fleeting warmth as he wiped the blood away from where it had already started to freeze against the skin of Gordon's face. And with his voice breaking slightly with emotion, but still sharp as a knife as he swore on their _mother_ —that there was no way in hell Gordon was going to die.

And the thing about Scott—the thing Gordon sometimes wonders if he knows better than anyone else could, after what happened in the course of the hour he spent with his brother, in the cold and the dark, hovering on the brink of death—is that he has a way of deciding what he wants to be true and then just squaring himself up against the reality of the world around him—and expecting the world to fall obediently into line.

On the side of a mountain, in the wake of the precipitous fall of cold and darkness that followed the sunset, and with his body as broken as it had ever been, before or since, simultaneously two things were true: Gordon was going to die, and Scott wasn't going to let him.

In retrospect and with the benefit of many years of experience, Gordon knows a great deal more about dying than what he'd learned in an hour on the side of a mountain, and all of it learned secondhand. People die by increments of seconds, of inches, of degrees. Or by minuscule variations in random chains of circumstance. Sometimes people die by the choice to take the bus instead of the train, or sometimes by the decision of powerful strangers on the far side of the planet, or most often just by the hundreds of thousands of small mistakes and mischances that add up over the course of a life, and total up in a moment.

And sometimes people live because their eldest brothers say so.

Gordon remembers Scott lying huddled in the snow beside him, as close as he'd dared, poised to bully back the leading edge of that infinite, inviting darkness. Prodding him in the ribs until he found a broken place that made Gordon whimper, and then jabbing his knuckles against it again, hard enough to make Gordon scream, when he'd threatened to slip too far from the lower boundary of consciousness.

He remembers Scott talking until the cold made his voice rasp, words shouted or whispered, begging and scolding and cajoling and pleading, rising and falling or growing distant, but never stopping. Talking about their father and how he couldn't stand to lose any of his boys, after the way he'd lost their mother. Talking about the brilliant clarity of the stars overhead and wondering if Alan and John were back at the lodge, watching them, and how Gordon couldn't do something as selfish as dying beneath the stars that their brothers loved so much. Talking about how everyone loved him too much to let him go, and so that was what he'd just have to hold onto.

He remembers, much later, learning that the back of Scott's bare hand had gotten frostbitten, the skin gone all bright red and shiny and taut, while the palm stayed cradled against the side of his little brother's face. The last point of contact between them hadn't even been warm in the end, but Scott still hadn't let go until one of the paramedics pulled him away. He'd come out of the ordeal with hypothermia, and so had Virgil. Neither of them as bad as Gordon, but enough that all three of them were bundled up into the rescue chopper when it finally arrived, and whisked away to the nearest hospital.

And then a hastily induced coma. And then half a dozen surgeries. And then enough time spent in the hospital that his eighteenth birthday came and went, and he'd aged out of pediatric care and into general. Then an entire year of physical therapy, and a long, grueling road back to a peak physical condition that's better than average, undeniably, but still a long way from what it was. Or what it could've been.

But even if he was never going make it back to where he was supposed to be, at least he'd been alive to get anywhere at all, and Gordon knows he's got Scott to thank for it. Whether or not he really remembers what happened or whether his only version of the event is just pieced together from everything he's been told—it's an incontrovertible fact that Scott saved his life.

It's a difficult thing to try and reconcile, eight years later, when Gordon's decided that he hates his eldest brother.

* * *

In the end it turns out he was wrong, but then, so was she.

Because even though they'd both said otherwise, they're both still upset by the time he finishes the story. In Penelope's defense, _she_ wasn't upset until she realized just how upset _he'd_ gotten. She'd first started to suspect that something might be wrong as he'd meandered to the end of the narrative, glossing over what sounds like it was over a year's worth of recovery in the aftermath, and trailing off into brooding silence. She'd known for sure when he'd drawn a deep breath, let it out as a shaky sigh, and then pushed himself up, away from her without a further word. Then he'd gotten out of bed and promptly vanished into the bathroom. The door had closed between them, the light had turned on, a sliver of gold at the bottom of the doorway, and then moments later she'd heard the rainfall sound of the shower.

It's not like him to withdraw, to leave her without a word as to why. Even if they don't yet know each other well enough to have mapped out one another's scars, Penelope still knows enough about Gordon to know it's a simple truth of his nature—he's more likely to reach out than to pull away.

But despite this conviction, Penelope's still been left alone, sitting up in bed and staring at the bathroom door, wondering just what exactly she's meant to make of this. It only takes a few moments for mild bewilderment to become mild anxiety, and then only a few moments more for mild anxiety to become mild panic.

Panic is no more Penelope's natural state than solitude is Gordon's, and she feels uncharacteristically paralyzed by indecision as she stares at the door he's closed between them. Her impulse is to follow him, but perhaps he doesn't want that. Perhaps he needs some distance, though they've had so much distance over the last two months that she finds herself craving his company, intimate or otherwise, and to be so callously abandoned in the middle of their morning makes her feel a new and particular kind of hurt.

And in his absence he's vindicated yet again, as for the third time in as many days, Penelope feels herself beginning to tear up. Accustomed as she is to her own internal landscape being a fairly clearcut and easily navigable place, the nebulous emotional muddle that seems to precipitate her tears is baffling, and only serves to upset her further. Her lower lip has the audacity to tremble. When an actual tear slips free and tracks down her cheek, she can bear it no longer and has no choice but to detangle herself from the bedsheets and slip across the room and through the door.

The bathroom is a surprisingly generous space, the same width as the bedroom, if not nearly as deep. The bathroom counter has two inset porcelain sinks, and behind them a mirror stretches from countertop to ceiling, making the room look bigger than it is, and multiplying the daylight from the narrow window, daintily obscured by a lace curtain. The bath/shower to her right runs hot enough that the whole room is already steamy, and her reflection in the mirror is only a vague shadow, silhouetted in the relative darkness of the doorway at her back.

The shower is enclosed by a sliding door of frosted glass, and his silhouette on the other side of it is blurred the same way her reflection is in the foggy bathroom mirror. Thus separated, they're both only vague outlines of themselves. And with the way the room is constructed, the shower is tucked in a little alcove, and if he hasn't heard the door open, then he doesn't yet know she's there. It's not too late for her to stop being so utterly foolish, to slip back out of the bathroom and calm herself down, to respect his boundaries and give him his space, and to instead devote herself to something useful, like getting dressed or making the bed.

But instead she takes a few more hesitant steps, pauses only a moment more, and then slides the shower door open. Emboldened, she steps over the edge of the bathtub and inside, into the warmth and the steam and the white noise of falling water.

The showerhead is at the opposite end of the shower from where she stands, and so is he, facing away, head and shoulders bowed to a torrent of heat and pressure. She can feel the draft of cold air that she brought with her, and the door of the shower creaks where it slides closed again. He must have noticed her enter, but he doesn't turn around, nor react in any perceptible fashion. And Penelope hesitates again.

It's not dim in the little cubicle. Quite the opposite, the tiles are all gleaming white, glazed porcelain. The bathroom itself is brightened by a blend of daylight and the glow of the overhead bathroom fixture—and so she can see him more clearly than she had before.

He _is_ just gorgeous. From behind, bathed in all that white-gold light, with water running in crystal rivulets down the tawny tanned skin of his bare back, Gordon is just _unfairly_ attractive. He's toned and fit and flawless, even accounting for the scars she has the forewarning to look for now. These only serve to add texture, and now that she knows to look, she takes advantage of the light and the angle to notice another scar, curving so far around his rib cage that it nearly reaches his spine. Another, a strange pattern of dappled scar tissue where his skin hasn't tanned quite as dark, covers his left shoulder blade. Then, of course, the long incision carving up his spine from the small of his back and its four smaller fellows, paired on either side.

But what's more important than his body is his body language, and the way he stands with one forearm braced against the wall, and his forehead bowed against it. He's an absolute picture of withdrawn misery, outwardly indifferent to her presence, and further unmoved when she reaches out to gently lay a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't acknowledge her touch, except for another little sigh and the further fall of his shoulders.

Her own sadness is suddenly transient. A quirk of chemistry, a little hormonal misfire, of the sort that just happen to people who are pregnant. New in the recognition that it's her pregnancy that's sent her reliable, orderly emotions into an unpredictable tailspin, Penelope's still a quick study, and presented with real, actual sadness, her own pale imitation promptly evaporates, vanishes into the steam that envelopes then both.

Univited but hopefully not unwanted, she steps closer. Her hands move more carefully than they might otherwise, as she slips her arms around him from behind, and gets close as she can with a simple, supportive embrace. It's nearly a decade since he came by the scars she won't be able to stop noticing now, but she's still new in the knowledge of the story of how he got them, and the thought of the pain they must represent is still fresh in her mind. When his free hand catches hers where it rests against his chest, there's a certain, immediately obvious desperation in the way he clings to her fingers and presses her palm against the beat of his heart, to let her know her presence is not only wanted, but warranted.

After a few more moments, it becomes apparent that he's not going to say anything, and that it's much worse than she thought. Something about the story he's told—and from clues Penelope's gathered from context, something about Scott—is upsetting enough that Gordon can't even articulate it, nor is he even trying.

Silence between them is uncommon. This one might not be hers to break, but equally she can tell he's not about to break it. It stretches out for several moments more, before Penelope decides on a course of action.

She takes her hand back with a gentle twist of her wrist, trades it away from him in exchange for a series of soft, delierbate kisses down the curve of his spine, warm water between her lips and his skin, before she begins to hum softly to herself, some miscellaneous little melody. She doesn't move away, only stretches up to peek over his shoulder before she reaches past him, looking for and finding a bar of soap, in a little niche cut into the shower wall.

It's mottled white and green, and when she sniffs it delicately, she nearly gags and can't supress a short cough. It smells, for lack of a better word, _soapy_. Chemical and fake and unpleasant, it might have been bearable when it was hidden away beneath other scents, but on its own it's overpowering. Thus offended, she has no choice but to lean past him again, this time for the other side of the shower door, to slide it open and throw the bar of soap unceremoniously outside. There's a splash as it lands in the toilet. Then there's a little huff of disbelief from over her shoulder, cutting through the silence of abject misery. She notices this, but outwardly ignores it. If she's learned one useful thing about Gordon in the last five years, and especially in the last few months, it's that he tends to reflect to the moods of those around him. It won't make him feel any better if she gets upset about the fact that _he_ is. Better to do something to divert his attention.

Sliding the shower door smartly closed again, she reaches instead for her own soap of choice, the cornerstone of her day, a bar of _L'Occitane_ from Paris, hand-milled and simply made, chiefly of neutral and inoffensive shea butter, particularly useful in helping to fade scars. And she would know, considering the concealment of her own is a perpetual and ongoing process. She puts a hand on his shoulder, humming softly, idly to herself, and nominally just steadying herself as she eases back into place behind him. He still hasn't said anything, but now it's a tangible silence, the sort that she's drawn deliberately down around her, rather than stepped into.

And it's a new bar of soap, unwrapped only yesterday from where she'd tucked it away within her luggage. The brand name is still embossed into the surface, not yet washed away. The edges haven't yet worn down, still hard and squared off against the palm of her hand. With precisely measured pressure, she runs the edge of the bar like the blade of a scalpel up the line of the incision at the small of his back.

Penelope has an edge of her own, and it's the sort that makes her smile to herself when his spine arcs involuntarily away from the boldness of such a gesture and he draws a big, startled breath at the sensation. It's just enough to jar him out of miserable passivity and get his attention as he stands up straight, almost frozen in front of her, suddenly tense and attentive.

The bar of soap flips deftly in her hand, becomes an innocuously flat surface cradled in her palm, and she starts to move it in slow, sudsy circles across his broad shoulders, still humming softly as she appreciates the shape of him. After a few moments, with her hand still resting absently on his left shoulder, she can feel the tension slowly start to ease out of him, and gradually he starts to relax. He doesn't turn around, but his hand comes up to touch hers, like he's making sure she's really there.

With the quality of the silence so altered, now it's fallen on her terms, and thus she feels entitled to break it properly. He's offered her such an intensely personal story, it seems only fair to respond in kind. If he doesn't yet feel like talking about whatever's hurt him, then she'll just have to find something to take his mind off it. She clears her throat and stretches up onto her toes, steadying herself against him as soap suds begin to swirl around the shower drain at their feet, as she tells him the beginning of a story of her own—

"It's strange that you might've died on the side of a mountain, the same year you won your medal, darling. I was born in a ditch at the side of the road, the same night my mother died."


End file.
